Wines – tasting, purchasing, serving

Wines – tasting, purchasing, serving

As wines are best enjoyed with the right food, pairing of wines with food is the first step you have to keep in mind. As wines can be sweet or tart, red or white, learn to discern between the different varieties. Generally, red wine goes better with meat and white wine with fish. Sweet or dessert wines are usually served after the meal. 

 
Next comes the flavor of the wine. They can come in strong or subtle flavor. Traditional wine making countries, such as Italy, France, Germany, make wine with subtle flavors. Comparatively new countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada or the United States make wine with stronger flavors.

After you have decided on your type of wine, comes the tasting. You can host wine tasting parties, which are a fun way to entertain. Usually there is a leader who is the knowledgeable one. You can invite a few people and seat them at the table with empty wineglasses, one for each one, preferably. If there is both red and white wine, go for two glasses per person. Usually the sequence is white before red, light before heavy and dry before sweet. You can serve several wines from the same producer, with different vintages. This is ‘vertical tasting.’ The producer may be different in ‘horizontal tasting,’ with the wine being of the same kind. For ‘blind tasting,’ the identity or vintage of the wine is not revealed to avoid bias by the tasters.

While serving wines, keep in mind to choose a good corkscrew. After you have opened the bottle, wipe with a clean soft cloth so that no grains of the cork remains. The right kind of glass is very important as different types of wines are to be served in different sized and shaped glasses. The better wine goes in bigger glasses. Plastics are forbidden while serving wine, therefore invest in some good quality glasses, both for the red and the white wine variety.