Understanding Wine

Understanding wine is essential if you want to get more enjoyment from drinking it, but it is easy and fun to find out! Wine making is an art that has been practised for over 4,000 years. Essentially wine comes in three basic types: red, white and sparkling. Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir grapes make full, rich red wines. Merlot grapes produce lighter, softer red wines. Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc grapes make white wines. Good wines usually have their year of production on the bottle. This is called the vintage. Some years produce better wines than others. Most red wines improve with a little ageing, some for as long as ten years.

Most red wines are not distributed until about two years after they are put in the bottle. However, most white wines do not benefit from ageing, except for champagne and sweet dessert wines. Basic wine tasting is not difficult to understand and can be a fun learning process! So get a grip and try it for yourself and become more educated enjoyably you can even take a holiday while doing it or a weekend course..

Wines can be enjoyed like any other drink, but they are often consumed with a meal. For full flavoured meats such as beef choose a full red wine, like a Zinfandel, Cabernet or Syrah. Tasting a wine is like anything else a matter of preference. If you like a particular wine whatever the color or sweetness (dryness) and you like it with a certain food then drink it! Don't be put of by wine snobs who insist that only certain wines accompany particular foods. Its mostly rubbish except to say you don't want a sweet dessert wine with a main course usually; however I quite like a sweet white wine with a curry! So there you are, no accounting for taste.

For lighter meat like pork or lamb a medium bodied red like a Merlot or Pinot Noir is usually a good choice.

Chicken and fish are usually accompanied by white wine like a Chardonnay. This wine will also complement a non-meat dish, as would a Zinfandel or Riesling.

Sparkling and white wines are best served chilled.

A red wine should be served when it is only slightly below room temperature. Both wines are best left to stand before opening. Some red wines have sediment which should stay at the bottom of the bottle, and an agitated sparkling wine is often much too eager to leave the bottle. You can serve a white wine immediately after removing the cork, but a red wine benefits from 'breathing' for about half an hour after the bottle is opened. For best results gently decant the red wine into another container. This allows a greater surface area of the wine to breathe and leaves the sediment behind in the bottle. If you do not have a decanter, pour half a glass from the bottle and let both stand for 15 to 30 minutes before serving this way you will learn more about wine than you did before.

An exciting way to get to know more about wine is to take a holiday wine tasting! here you will learn all the things you need to know about wine tasting and enjoy the lessons at the same time. Who could have said that about school?

It is important to realise that Wine is still an alcoholic drink and it is better to drink a little and learn to enjoy it than to get drunk each time as it will spoil the very real pleasure of the perfect wine. Of course you won't know what the perfect wine for you is until you keep on tasting them!