All About Wine And Its Goodness!

Choosing a good wine can be a nightmare, especially when you’ve got someone to impress. You’re having a dinner party – you’ve planned the menu thoroughly, dusted off your best crockery and wine glasses, and got everything prepared – except for the wine selection. There’s just so much to think about, and everyone else always seems to know so much more than you do about it. You stand there for ages looking at the endless shelves of different bottles, and the more you wonder about it the harder it gets. That’s why we’ve put together a few tips for what to watch out for and how to choose the perfect wine.

Firstly and most importantly, you need to match the wine to the meal you have chosen. Everyone has different opinions of which wine will taste good with different foods, but there are a few basic rules that you can follow if you’re not sure. The easiest way is to simply match the colour of the wine to the meat, you can’t go wrong. So if you’re eating red meat go for a dark red Cabernet or Syrah. For lamb or pork a medium bodied red like a Merlot will be less heavy but still has a rich flavour. Chicken and fish dishes are often overpowered by reds so it’s best to go for a crisp white instead, such as a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. If it’s a special occasion or celebration, you might be better off with a sparkling wine, served in fancy Champagne flutes.

Once you’ve worked out what kind of wine you are looking for, look at where it was made. Wines from different regions will be hugely different in quality, so it pays to do a bit of research into the best regions. If you’re not sure, France is always a safe bet and has been producing good quality fine wines for hundreds of years. Italy is another one, and Chilean wines are very popular at the moment too, particularly reds.

Another thing it’s worth checking is the vintage of the wine, or the year it was bottled. A real wine buff will know the best vintages for each region, and will only buy vintages they know came from a particularly good crop. For the rest of us, it can seem like a lot of guesswork, but if you know a few of the basics you’ll be on the right track at least. A common misconception is that the older a wine is, the better it will taste. It’s true that most red wines do improve with a little aging, but most wineries won’t distribute these reds for a couple of years after bottling, which gives them time to mature. This means by the time they become available they are ready to drink and will taste good. Most white or sparkling wines don’t need any aging, and are good to drink straight away.

Tags: champagne flutes, choosing wine, wine, wine glasses

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under choosing wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.