Kitchen Essential

If you’d like to expand your knowledge of wine beyond where you get the best deal on Tassies, read on. If you remain firmly committed to the hops fraternity, you may want to skip to one of the other stupefyingly interesting sections. For instance, it is very dangerous handling heavy machinery in any shape, form or size after a wine tasting (a dedicated driver is a valuable asset) and a few other details that you may want to indulge us sharing with you. One thing is certain, if you do study this section you will know so much marvellous and interesting wine terminology, if you don’t impress anyone you’ll definitely confuse the pants off someone! Before we get serious — with wine, too, you only learn through experience. Take note of what exactly you’re drinking. Not all wines will cause your face to scrunch up as if someone has just poured a bottle of vinegar down your throat. If you’re lucky you may even find a wine that leaves you with a blissful little grin, like few other things in life ever will.

Wine Terminology

Wine names have become more obscure than ever before. We have wines named after war generals, coastal towns, national monuments and other even more interesting entities from railroads to whales and even vat numbers. Every so often you may even come across a wine named according to the grape from which this heavenly drink was made — a varietal such as Sauvignon Blanc. A naming form widely used in Europe is the appellation, where wines are named according to the region in which the grape is grown, for instance Bordeaux. And to add a bit more flavour to the naming game, there are blends such as Cabernet Shiraz named after a bunch of grapes (excuse the pun).

Wine also has its own personalized anatomy. The wine’s nose refers to the flavours that you smell when sticking your own down the glass before taking the first sip. A wine may not be a runner, but it certainly has legs. These may be found especially in older red wines — watch them formingas you tilt your glass from side to side. Wines age, some becoming better, maturing, is filling outas they come to character, others best drunk as soon as possible. Some wines are fuller bodied than others, some heavier and some lighter, some beautiful others mediocre, all of them adding to the never-ending adventure of opening a bottle.

And best of all — you can drink this marvellous creation, leaving you with a warm, fuzzy feeling when the last drop has been squeezed from the bottle.

White Wine

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. If you don’t ask the right questions you don’t get accurate answers. If you don’t ask for a good white wine you won’t get a good white wine. Chances are you’ll be served the house white; not necessarily undrinkable, but probably not the best you can do. Going to a bottle store to get a bottle of wine may also be a fairly intimidating experience, leaving you staring at the interesting colours on the labels of the wall of bottles in front of you rather than making an informed choice.

The information that follows is by no means the last word for wine drinkers and if you are a Wine Master, a Member of some Wine Academy or a self-acclaimed Wine Fundi, we suggest you read on purely for entertainment value.

Wine Appearance and serving

Everything but white … these wines can vary dramatically in colour, from being nearly clear to a deep honey yellow, all depending on the age of the wine, the grapes, and how it was made. Most wooded and heavier white wines, such as Chardonnay, have a deeper colour whereas the younger, lighter wines have exactly that appearance. But white wine is never cloudy! Regardless of the colour, if the wine is not as clear as those amazing pools they have in the ads, something is horribly wrong. Pour it down the drain, feed it to the neighbour’s noisy dog or return it to its source, but don’t drink it.

White wine should always be chilled, at least a few hours before the momentous occasion when the cork gets pulled. And if it isn’t cold enough to your liking, add a couple of ice-cubes! There are few things as horrible as a glass of lukewarm white wine — not even watered down wine. An even nicer drink in the midst of summer, and one that will prolong your drinking time, is a spritzer. Half-fill a big glass with wine and top up with ice and soda water. You can even drink it with a straw if it’s going to make you happy.

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