3 Tips to improving the taste of the wine

by Haydn S. Adams
Beyond Napa Valley Wine Blog

Tonight’s the night that you decided to pull out that ’02 La Joie from Vérité that you have been treasuring in your wine cellar. Maybe you are celebrating an anniversay, maybe you just aced your MCAT’s. And you want to do nothing more than to show off how awesome this wine is.

After all, Robert Parker gave it a 98. So you pull out your wine glasses, the ones that you feel look the most beautiful, irregarding of the shape of the glass, and in one fell swoop, you uncork it and pour that purple gold all the way to the top of the wine glasses around the table.

And you my friend just treated that $150 bottle the same way I might treat my 99 cent diet coke I bought from the 7-11, with maybe the exception of holding the ice. So if you are about to uncork that special bottle, here are 3 tips you can use that bring out the magic in a great bottle of wine.

Tip #1 – Decant the wine & give it some air

Before I go too much further, take a moment and read why I am not the biggest fan of the Vinturi Wine Aerator. If you have invested a good deal of money into a wine collection, the single greatest device you can have at your dispersal to show off your wine is a decanter.

They range from $30 for the basics to the hundreds that feature waterford or Wedgwood crystal. My advice? By the $30 dollar one, unless you want to painstakingly clean a franglie $400 item over and over and over and… you can see where that is leading.

The power of a decanter is it allows oxygen into the wine. For most wines, I’d recommend that you decant it and allow it to sit for about 30-60 minutes, letting the wine calm down for a second after pouring it quickly into the decanter. If you are pressed for time, do a double decant, and pour the wine back into the bottle (here is where a funnel really helps out). Also, by allowing air in you are loosening up a few of the tannins and slightly reducing the sulfates in the wine (a little bit of a plus for all of you out there who get headaches from drinking too much red wine).

Tip #2: Invest in some good stemware

If I had a dollar for every time a restaurant has poured wine into the wrong glass, I’d probably be able to afford the wine mentioned above. The stemware is the make or break point.

For the 2002 La Jolie, I’d go with a Bordeaux style wine glass (featured here to my left). I tend to use this style of wine glass for most of my red wine tasting, as it fulfills most of the basic parameters to showcase your red wine

• Tapered top, allowing the glass to capture the bouqet of the wine and not let it escape
• Ample room to stick my nose into the glass
• Room on the stem to hold it if I didn’t want my fingers to affect the temperature of the wine
• Tall enough so I can lean the glass to one side and examine the color (and rim)

Tip #3: Only fill that wine glass 1/3 the way full

This is one of the most commom mistakes, even restaurants, make. The reason why you use a large wine glass is so you can fill it only a 1/3 of the way full. That way, the bouquet (the aromatics) can easily dance inside of the glass. By filling the glass all the way up, you’ve left no room for the wine to display itself. You’ve essentially killed any chance in smelling that one.

Remember, the whole reason why a wine bottle is the size that it is today was for two people to have two glasses of wine and not get intoxicated. So think about breaking up that wine bottle into 4 – 5 glasses at your table, instead of into 2 right off of the bat.

To recap. If you really want to show off that bottle you’ve been saving. Take these steps.  1) Decant it. Simple. Uncork wine, pour into decanter. I recommend, for big wines, that you let it sit for about 30 minutes or longer. 2) Pull out some appropriate stemware. Crate and Barrel and Bed Bath & Beyond both stock excellent glasses for very reasonable prices. Usually the more decrative and fu-fu the look, the less good it will really do you (aside from being a great conversation starter). And 3) only fill that good-sized glass about 1/3 of the way full (with the exception being Champagne flutes and dessert apartifs). Trust me, you can always pour yourself some more later.

By following these simple steps, you’ll literally make that wine sparkle and shine.

Haydn S. Adams | Beyond Napa Valley Blog

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