Wine Basics - Introduction to Wine, Wine Drinking

If you have to worry very much about the storage conditions of your wine, it probably means that you have a lot of wines to store. This, in turn, raises a new issue: ensuring that there is some balance in all the wines you have. It's not good to have all white wines, all red wines, or all wines that need to sit for a few years before reaching their peak potential. Once you start planning on storage conditions for your wine, you should start thinking about ensuring that your wine collection is well-balanced.

Most people probably don't think much about the proper serving order for wines, but serving or drinking wine in the right order can make a big difference. Serving or drinking wines in the wrong order can negatively affect both the taste of the wines as well as the taste of the food, so paying attention to which wines are served when can enhance the meal, helping everyone enjoy both their wine and their food all the more.

Once you've gotten the wine list and have reviewed it so you know its organization, how do you actually order the right wine? Perhaps the real question is how to order a decent wine without paying too much and without looking ignorant? There's a lot of pressure on you if people are looking to you to pick a wine, but it's not too difficult to make a relaxed, informed decision from a restaurant wine list — or at least appear to being do so, and isn't that what counts?

Wine wouldn't be nearly as interesting or enjoyable if all wines tasted basically the same. The most important factor which determines differences in how wines taste is the type of grape used to produce the wine. Many wines sold around the world are sold based on what sort of variety grape it was made from, so a knowledge of the flavors and aromas produced by different grape varieties is indispensable when making decisions about which wines to buy in which circumstances.

After so much staring and sniffing, you're probably anxious to finally drink some of your wine, but now is not the time to lose focus. When tasting wine, that first sip is critical. You shouldn't just toss back an entire glass; instead, you need to slowly and carefully take in your first sip of wine in order to appreciate all of its qualities. You also need to sip in just the right way, which means sipping in a manner you aren't at all accustomed to.