Few things in life have the ability to enchant and delight the way a perfect glass of wine can. In order to truly revel in the glories of the vine, it is necessary to take a bit of time and learn all you can about the subject. The article that follows is intended to help you do just that.
Buy only one bottle of each wine. If you find that you like a particular wine a great deal it can be very tempting to want to buy a lot of it at once to save money, but this is often a bad idea. Instead, buy only one to ensure that you do not fill your cellar with one type.
Don’t panic when wine stains a shirt; grab the Windex. Windex will rid your shirt of the stain better than the traditional soap and water method. Do this quickly since waiting can make getting rid of it harder.
Avoid over chilling white wines. Many wine drinkers will buy a bottle of their favorite white and return home to pop it in the fridge. While chilling whites is important, too much cold will diminish flavors in the wine; sometimes the most important ones. Target a temperature around 60 degrees up to 68 degrees to achieve the prime flavor.
Even though white wines should be thoroughly chilled when you drink them, you should avoid storing them in a refrigerator for weeks at a time. The best thing to do is to keep them at room temperature and refrigerate them an hour or two before you plan on serving them.
Learn the pronunciation of all of the wines that you serve so that you sound as professional as possible when you are around your guests. This can go a long way if you are having a party or get together with friends in your house. There are common names for wine, so get acquainted with the lingo.
If you are not too familiar with wine, make sure to shop at a wine store. While many grocery stores and even some convenient stores carry wine, they do not have the staff on hand who really understand wine. If you shop with professionals, you will have a better chance of finding the wine you want and gaining valuable information in the process.
It will be a lot easier to talk about wine with other connoisseurs if you master their vocabulary. There are specific words used to describe flavors and colors. You also need to familiarize yourself with different regions and wineries. Have an expert explain these terms to you and present you with a selection of wines to illustrate different examples.
Be true to your own preferences when it comes to wine. If there is a particular wine that you enjoy, then it’s sure to be a great selection. Use this as a rule of thumb. You must learn to trust your individual palate when selecting wine. If your friends don’t like it, you will have more for yourself.
Maintaining the fr4eshness of Spanish wine is simple, but that method will change depending on the type. Rioja is a popular Spanish wine that can be stored for up to seven years. Store it in a cool, dark area until you are ready to enjoy it!
A good tip if you’re buying any wine from the grocery store is to make sure you get a bottle that’s fresh. Like anything in a supermarket, all the old stuff gets pushed up to the front, so you might need to dig a little deeper to find the newest bottle of wine you want.
Carry a map or some sort of direction for your given area. Some of the best wine venues are incredibly organized and easy to navigate, while others are chaotic and will lose you in the twits-and-turns. Print off a map of your designated area, and you’ll never miss that perfect shop just around the bend.
A single kind of grape, or varietal, creates varietal wines. Pinot Noir is a type of wine that is created from this process. To call itself this, a wine must be made up of at least ninety percent from the juice of one varietal. The unique flavor of some wines derives from a ten percent inclusion of another grape.
Riesling wines are made from white grapes and offer consumers a mouth full of delicate floral wine with hints of peach, honey or apricot. This wine pairs perfectly with seafood and chicken. Or, if you prefer, you can serve this delicate wine alongside an assortment of cheeses or desserts.
Go to wine tasting events. This is a great way to discover wines that you will love without purchasing a whole bottle to see how much you like it. Many times wine cellars and wineries offer wine tasting as part of their tours. Wineries are a great vacation destination, and you can bring home a souvenir bottle.
Wine can be saved. Once you finish drinking from the bottle for the evening, close it back up and refrigerate it. The wine should be good for about a day. If you leave it out at room temperature, however, it will eventually go bad because bacteria can grow. There are no hard and fast rules about how long wine is good for, so use your palate to guide you and refrigerate as soon as you know you are finished drinking.
When buying wine, the year it was produced is not necessarily the most important factor. While the climate of a region can change the taste of a wine, most of the largest wine-producing regions have fairly consistent temperatures. This means that a bottle produced in California in 2005 and a bottle from 2007, for example, should taste pretty similar.
Wine has the unique ability to enhance and improve most of life’s experiences. Learning all you can about wine is a great way to make your wine drinking experience even better than you thought possible. The piece above should have given you a head start on your journey to becoming a true expert.