BottleBlog by Bottlenotes: wine tasting notes, wine tasting event info, wine tasting trip recommendations, and more.

3 Wine Faux-Pax to Avoid

There’s no question that some of the biggest wine faux pas are the least known, and some of the mythical wine faux pas (e.g.: “No drinking white wine with steak,”) are simply untrue. Follow this quick list of three wine faux pas to avoid in any setting, and you’ll be sure to come off as wine-savvy:

 

1)      How to Hold a Glass of Wine

 

Wine glasses are beautifully shaped. They are also an example of form meeting function, where the glass itself is supposed to help enhance your wine-tasting experience. First, the bulb of the glass is shaped in such a way to help aerate the wine, enabling oxygen to interact with the living, breathing juice, thus release aromas that comprise a wine’s elegant set of scents, or the “nose” of the wine. Secondly, it has a stem for a reason. A stem not only looks elegant, but it serves two key functions: 1) It enables you to more easily swirl the glass and examine the wine’s color, key steps to take when wine tasting, and 2) It provides you something to hold other than the bulb of the glass. Putting your hands on the bulb of the glass not only leaves ugly fingerprints but serves to heat the wine, which is undesirable for white and red wines alike. So when enjoying a glass of wine next, please avoid this wine faux pas and hold the stem, or even the base of the glass instead.

 

2)      Putting Ice Cubes in a Glass of White Wine

 

It pains me greatly to see someone, often women, pop ice cubs into their white wine. For one, the winemaker has gone to great lengths to create a wine with body, balance, and a beginning, middle, and end that is totally disrupted when a wine is literally “watered down.” Secondly, if the goal is to chill a glass of wine more, the most time-efficient way to do so is to pop it into a freezer for 10 minutes, or  better yet, put it in a tub of ice WITH some cold water in it (so the bottle is in a freezing bath). Within a matter of minutes the whole bottle will be further chilled- and the composition of the wine preserved.

 

3)      Pouring or Consuming a Glass of Wine That’s About to Spill

 

Since so much (80%!) of the wine tasting experience is olfactory, the best way to enhance your wine tasting experience on a day-to-day basis is to take the time to let a wine aerate before you start drinking it, either by letting an open bottle sit on the counter for 15-20 minutes before consuming it, decanting it, or letting it aerate in the wine glass itself. If a glass of wine is poured half-full (or less), it is most readily swirled without creating spillage. If a glass of wine is poured too full, not only does it inhibit your ability to swirl the wine, thus maximizing your personal enjoyment, but it looks a bit sloppy, can more easily spill on you, making anyone look and feel like a lush. All tasting-tips aside, no one likes to look like a lush. So next time you are serving a glass of wine, or being served one, be conscientious to pour or ask for a glass to only be poured half-full. A secret of mine is to ask for a single glass on a restaurant wine list to be split into two glasses. In so doing, you avoid feeling “cheated” and can even more readily share your wine with your wine-tasting partner, adding to the fun of the experience.

 

In short, if you hold the glass by the stem or base, avoid chilling down white wine with ice cubes, and consciously only serve or ask to receive wine in glasses that are half-full, you’ll be well on your way to faux-pas-free wine tasting. Cheers!

 

 

By Alyssa J. Rapp, the Founder & CEO of Bottlenotes.com, the premier online wine community where wine enthusiasts come to learn about wine, share tasting notes, and buy wine. Alyssa is also the author of Bottlenotes Guide to Wine: Around the World in 80 Sips.™

Cutting Cheeses: Just say no to Van Gogh!

You know who you are: you're the one who routinely cuts off the nose.  No, not your OWN nose (Van Gogh did enough damage to facial appendages for the whole lot of us); I’m talking about the nose of that poor brie innocently minding its own business in your refrigerator.

   

While many of us know cheeses come in different shapes and sizes, few of us are aware that they should actually be cut according to their shape.  This ensures even distribution of the rind and makes it easier to keep. It also cuts down on the chances that we both will be left not with the last piece of cheese, but with the last piece of rind. 

Read on for the short list of guidelines…

• A triangle of Brie, whose tip (or “nose”) is chopped off more often than not, should be cut into thinner triangles, like a pie.

• Any round soft cheeses (like Camembert), or pyramid or cone-shaped cheeses should also be cut more or less like a pie – starting from the mid-point, and slicing out, so that the resulting slice is triangular in form. 

• Square cheeses (like Pont-l’Eveque) should be cut into smaller squares or rectangles, although cutting them  like a Camembert is acceptable as well.

• Small goat cheese rounds need merely to be cut in half, leaving semi-circles.

• Cheeses sold in disks (and therefore only have rind around their circumference, as opposed to the rounds, which are covered in rind), like Fourme, should be cut into thin slices, retaining their circumference of rind.

For some of you, this may be old news; for others, it’s undoubtedly a shocking revelation.  It may be too late for Van Gogh to change his ways, but for those of you guilty of chopping off more than one nose in your life, help has arrived, in the form of the above guidelines.  So get thee to a creamery and follow these simple “how-to’s” asap!  Lucky you, practice makes perfect.

Antonia Moran, Director of Food and Wine Research

Shortcomings of the Rating System used by the “Triumvirate” of American Critics

Response to “In Vino Veritas?” in the Sunday Business Section of the New York Times

(Sunday, August 13, 2006)~ Part I

I was truly heartened by Gary Rivlin’s article in today’s Sunday Business section of the New York Times, entitled “In Vino Veritas?” A majority of the inspiration behind Bottlenotes is a direct reflection of Rivlin’s thesis that “wine ratings [by the triumvirate] might not pass the sobriety test.” (The triumvirate refers to Robert Parker, the Wine “Speculator,” and the Wine Enthusiast.)

Bottlenotes is a customized wine club service delivering wine tailored to individuals’ personal tastes. Our service is predicated on two key assumptions: one’s journey into the world of wine should begin first by learning which wines are right for you, and secondly, in understanding which regions, or wine styles, best suit one’s personal tastes.

Most importantly, our service presumes that no one human being should govern the modicum of taste for an entire country, let alone the globe. Taste is highly personal, a reflection of one’s actual sensitivity to bitterness as researched by the University of California at Davis, and qualitatively, to where one’s traveled, one’s favorite cuisines, etc. It is for this reason that we work incredibly hard at Bottlenotes to elucidate individuals’ taste preferences as well as to source some of the best boutique and estate wines from around the world for our club members.

Rivlin’s first accurate critique is that the scoring system used by the industry triumvirate is actually based on a 15 point scale, arguably a 12-13 point scale, rather than the 100 point system as indicated. For this reason, the 100-point rating scale enormously inflated, upwardly biasing the scores.

Second, Rivlin acknowledges that wines scored highly by the triumvirate (logically!) reflect their personal taste preferences, which often skew toward wines of big, bold flavor and highly extracted fruit. The scores do not reflect the best wines of each style profile, but rather, reflect “the best wines in the world” according to individuals with taste preferences like Robert Parker, or critics at the Speculator or Enthusiast.

Third, I would add to Rivlin’s argument by suggesting that wines rated by the triumvirate are not representative of a truly random sample of data, which would serve to legitimate these scores. In my past year as CEO of Bottlenotes, I cannot tell you how many of our suppliers, some of the best boutique wine producers from around the world, tell me heartbreaking stories about how none of “the three” would even accept samples of their wine to taste.

The implications of these shortcomings are twofold. In the sea of dynamite wine available in the world today, numerous wines are either a) unrated, or b) inaccurately rated, creating a disadvantage to these small and boutique wineries worldwide, and more, to the consumers’ who are being misinformed.

Alyssa Rapp, Founder & CEO, Bottlenotes, Inc

Why Care about the Pair?

It’s 4:00 Friday afternoon.  Only an hour left of work until the weekend, and only four hours left until your dinner guests arrive.  You haven’t even decided what to cook, and time does not necessarily permit you to call in a Cordon Bleu chef.

Fortunately, you have that perfect bottle of wine from your recent Bottlenotes wine club shipment - one tailored exclusively to your personal taste.  While your meal will undoubtedly have to be on the simple side, the effect with that perfect wine pairing will make it appear as if you labored on the meal all day.  A good food pairing choice will result in a meal in which the food and wine interact and play off one another, thereby highlighting each other’s flavors. In other words, the earthy qualities of mushrooms or duck will accentuate a Pinot Noir’s characteristic earthiness, while this quality would be lost were one to pair the Pinot with a spicy or more pungent dish.

 

Not completely confident in your abilities to make the right match?

Go to www.bottlenotes.com, click on “My Cellar,” and the wine you are pouring. You’ll see an array of perfect pairing suggestion ~ cheese and “general” pairings. Still not satisfied? You can always email pairings@bottlenotes.com for more help as needed…even recipes!

Bottlenotes is a treasure trove of food and wine pairing suggestions, whereby you can type in a wine varietal, and delicious food pairings pop up – from general pairings, to cheese pairings, to a specific recipe.  Visit www.bottlenotes.com to learn more and ensure that your next meal is one that leaves you not only feeling like a culinary genie, but also leaves you twitching around 4:00 pm everyday to rush home and try a new and magical pairing.

- Antonia Moran, Director of Food & Wine Research, Bottlenotes, Inc.