Wine Basics - Beginners Guide

The times are changing and so are the drinking habits in India. With different phases in life we start with dark rum mostly Old Monk in school or college, graduate to beer, than vodka and later whiskey in our early working life followed by Scotch. As we reach further in the hierarchy we want to learn more about Golf and Wine, and most of our early knowledge of wine comes from watching movies or the Page-3 pictures and celebrities holding a glass of wine. So here is the basics of wine which will be an interesting read for people keen to learn about wine.

Types of Wine: Though there are thousands of shades in red wine itself, but there are 3 types of most popular wines, Red Wine, White Wine, and Sparkling Wine. The Champagne is the most commonly known sparkling wine. Some people get confused and call bubbly as Champagne, whereas only sparkling wines that come exclusively from the Champagne region of France, can be called “Champagne”. Bubbly from all other regions in the world are simply referred to as "sparkling wine."

Storage of wine: The best way to store a wine is to keep it in a cool, dark, still and in a sideway position.

• Keep it Cool: Optimal wine storage of most wines is around 13°C as any more heat and the wine will not taste the way it is supposed to be.
• Keep it Dark: Most colored glass bottles of wine have UV filters, but this does not necessarily offer full UV protection. If a wine stays in the direct light, it will affect the flavor of the wine significantly; a result of premature aging.
• Keep it Still: Don’t keep the wine on top of refrigerator. The constant vibration of the refrigerator or other appliances in close proximity does not allow the sediment from settling in a red wine.
• Keep it Sideways: Storing a wine on its side, will help keep the cork in constant contact with the wine and hence moist. This will keep the cork from shrinking and not allowing oxygen to seep into the bottle, which adversely affects the flavor. Even while buying the wine ensure that it was stored in a horizontal position.

Wine glassware: Red wines will taste the best when poured into and sipped from a wine glass with adequate room. An oval or a egg-shaped glass that narrows slightly at the top will help you appreciate the red wine to its fullest. To preserve the flavor, white wine glasses will have a smaller mouth like flutes, which reduces surface area and hence slows down the rate of oxidization. Champagne will have even smaller mouth limiting its exposure and contact with the air and reducing bubble loss.

Holding the glass: Always hold a flute glass by its stem, so that the hands do not warm the wine. Only in Hindi Movies it is allowed to hold a wine glass by its body.

Tasting and appreciating the wine: Follow the path LSST which means - Look, Smell, Swirl and Taste.

Look: Check the Color and Clarity of your wine by pouring wine into a suitable wine glass. Take a good look at the wine and later tilt the glass away from you to check the color of wine from the edges to the middle of the glass. A white background will help to check the color. Hold a white paper, napkin etc to use as the background.

Check color and try to find more than red, white or blush in wines. Red wine may display colors like maroon, purple, brown, red, ruby etc. Similarly white wine may be pale yellow, light green, golden, clear in appearance. In the same variety, older white wines are normally darker than the younger white wines while an older red wine may have more orange tinges on the color edges than its younger counterpart.

Smell: To smell wine's aroma, swirl the glass for minimum 10-12 seconds which will help to vaporize some of its alcohol to release more aroma. Then take a quick whiff to have a first impression.

Now further lower your nose in the glass and inhale deep. The second impression may differ. You may smell of vanilla, citrus, oak among others. A wine's aroma can easily tell you about its quality and other characteristics.

Taste: Start with a small sip, and let the wine roll around your mouth. There are three stages of taste - Attack phase, Evolution phase, and Finish.

1. Attack Phase: It is the initial impression of wine makes on your palate and should tell you about its alcohol content, tannin levels, residual sugar and acidity. Ideally these components should be well-balanced to not over power each other.
2. Evolution Phase: Note the flavor profile of wine in this phase. In a red wine one may start notice fruit – berry, plum, prune or fig; some spice – pepper, clove, cinnamon, or a woody flavor like oak, cedar etc. Similarly in a white wine one may taste apple, pear, tropical or citrus fruits. The taste may be floral in nature or consist of honey, butter, herbs etc. Apart from normally available grape wines, few companies have also launched exotic Mango Wines and Lychee Wines in India. Do mail me if you need more information on this.
3. Finish: The wine's finish is how long the flavor lasts on your palate. Check if it lasted several seconds. Check if it is light-bodied (like the weight of water), medium-bodied (like the weight of milk) or full-bodied (like the consistency of cream). Check if you can taste the remnant of the wine on the back of your mouth and throat. Check if you immediately want another sip or if it tasted bitter at the end. Also check for the last impression like fruit, butter, oak etc.

Cooling your Wine: Keeping wine bottle in the bucket of ice and water is the best way to chill it. Fill the ice bucket up to 3/4 with ice mixed with water. Keep the base of the wine bottle in the ice and allow it to chill for about 20-30 minutes. The wine can also be chilled in the refrigerator, but it will take a good two to three hours to reach appropriate serving temperature, which brings us to our next point as to what is the ideal serving temperature.

Serving Wines: The optimal serving temperature of wine is:

White Wines: 7-10 °C, Red Wines: 10-18 °C, Sparkling Wines: 6-11 °C

Pairing food and wine: A good wine can help further appreciate food by bringing flavors. Pairing wines and your favorite foods should not be complicated if few tips are kept in mind. The thumb rule is to have a white wine with sea food and white meat, and red wine with red meat, though this combination may not always give best results.

These are the basics and further appreciation will build up over time with continuous following up with the basics, tasting and making notes for future references.

-Pawan Soni

The pictures above are from Google images