How do you really drink a glass a wine?

Well, I suppose it would first help to buy a bottle. Then open it. If you have never opened a bottle of wine before, you are in for a treat. If you choose to use the below rotary winged puller corkscrew, you are asking for a punishment worse than 100 push ups. Don't use it. It sucks. And breaks your cork, which is a no-no.

Now, just live the simple life and buy or borrow a simple corkscrew. See below. $10.

It has a neat little knife that pops off the side to cut the top off and then screw the screw in. Then proceed to use the lever on the side as leverage on the side of the wine bottle to pull it out. 

I have a fantasy that one day I can do this like a super cool waiter that does it standing up without putting it on a table. Practice makes perfect.

Now that you have the bottle successfully open and with hopefully no cuts or sprayed glass anywhere, you need a glass. I will not go into specific glass types today, but will do so soon. This is so much more important than you can imagine - each varietal can taste differently in different glasses. 

If you choose to drink white wine, for the love of everything Holy, please do not add ice cubes. That is the cardinal sin of wine drinking. Remove that temptation from your life now. I will pray for your healing. 

One thing many of you may not know is that you should always hold the glass at its stem. That way, your hand will not warm up the wine. This is especially important with whites.This is also why I am not a huge fan of stemless glassware. Just stick with the stems, is what I say. 

Good, wine in glass and now we are ready to survey the goods. 

Yes, yes, we have all thought the same things. What in the heck do I do now? Four things:

1. You want to swirl the wine a bit. Since the wine has been left alone in a vacuum of a bottle for how ever many months or years, it needs to "aerate." Aeration - the process by which air is circulated through. You can actually also do this as you pour out the wine and we will talk about that in a future post.

2. You want to smell the wine. What smells come to you? This is not rocket science but can be hard at first. Flowers? Grapefruit? Nuts? Coffee? Chocolate? Have fun with a friend trying out the different smells you can get from your wine.

3. You want to check its color. This is pretty fun and helps if you place it between you and a light source. It may look pink, dark yellow, dark red, purple, etc. These all indicate the different "weight" of the wine, the presence of tannins (tannin - a bitter, acidic compound that is often found in "heavy" red wines) and different varietal types.

4. Finally, after all of this hard work, you want to drink it. Not shoot it, not down it all in one drink. Just sip it and take small bits at a time. You want to "nurse" a glass of wine. This is because a variety of flavors can come to you based on where the wine hits your tongue and how it meets the oxygen in the air.

One tip when drinking - I like to bring the wine into my mouth, swirl it and slurp it a bit. It takes some practice and you might choke a time or two....I do not know this at all from personal experience, of course. :-) The slurping method helps to bring more oxygen into the wine and releases its flavors even more.

Once you have swallowed, take note of what is called "the finish." The flavors that arrive to the back of your tongue after the wine is gone. It's pretty amazing and can be a completely different taste than when you first drank the wine.

Wine is so cool. Did I mention that yet today?

Cheers!