I can hold my liquor pretty well. No, not like that. I’m a cheap drunk. Two glasses of wine and I’m done. I learned at an early age that hangovers were so bad that I’d actually stop drinking to avoid them.
What I mean is that as I learned more and more about wine, mostly from people who made it, I learned that how you serve wine is almost as important as the wine itself.
Colorado is serious beer country these days. And whiskey. And while the offerings from Colorado vineyards are fare behind the state’s two far more famous luxuries, holidays mean wine here and across the nation.
As soon as you start talking about this, many wine lovers start thinking the lecture is going to be about oversized balloons of glass that allow for serious nose and moderate gape at just the right angle…
No. The rules of how to serve wine and in what aren’t meant to impress people with way too much time and money on their hands. The ideas behind types of glass and shapes of containers has only to do with making everyday wine taste better every day.
Here’s some simple rules and suggestions that I’ve picked up from the likes of the vintners who produce favorite labels like Duckhorn, Joseph Phelps, Silver Oak, as well as “neighborhood” makers in Tavell, Alsace, Cassis and Rheingau.
All apt wines smell good, and being able to smell or “huff” the wine while you drink it enhances the taste. There’s no mystery here. Taste and smell go hand in snout. Sorta. The old adage of holding one’s nose to get medicine down really works. When the nasal passages are shut down, so, too is the ability to taste things. So being able to get your schnoz in a glass of wine while you tip it back makes the actual flavor of the wine more pronounced. While all wines smell better in a big-bowled wine glass, the enhanced effect of huffing and drinking is most noticeable and enjoyable with red wines.
Reds are generally drier, higher in alcohol, aged longer and have more complex tastes going on.
Big glass, but small amounts
Pouring small quantities of wine in glass serves a few purposes. If the wine is red, it allows you to “swirl” the wine and expose it to the air, which drastically changes its taste. Wine bottled for years, as red wines generally are, often taste pretty harsh just seconds after they’ve been uncorked. Small pours allow you mix the wine and air quicker and better, often softening it and making it easier to drink. This advice isn’t just for expensive, old bottles. Cheap red wine benefits just as much if not more. In addition, small pours help you control the temperature of the wine. A big glass of a too-cool red won’t warm up and get friendly. A big glass of cool white can get warm and harsh before you can drink it all, especially in a hot day. And big reds that get too warm? Like gasoline.
Stick to basics
Stems are a pain to wash, but they really do serve a purpose. They keep your hands off the bowl of the glass. Humans are hot creatures, almost 100 degrees hot. Keeping your paw wrapped around a glass of white wine will heat it up fast. Same for reds. While some wines are served too cold or are flat even at the preferred basement temperature, they need a little coaxing from a warm palm. But if you can’t adjust that except for putting the glass down, wine drinking becomes too much of a job.
The rule so far? Big stems are good for most red and whites, bigger bowls for reds are even better.
No rule is the rule
Here are the exceptions: Sparkling wines should always be served in a stem, because they turn funky in heat pretty fast, usually becoming overly effervescent to the point of feeling like you’re swallowing Alka-Selzer. Holding a glass of bubbly by the stem keeps it cool and consistently charged. Moreover, tall, “flutes” keep the bubbly from going flat before you can drink them.
Juicy, chummy reds, like Italian Valpolicella and French Beaujolais nouveau are built to drink in coppas. That’s Italian for “cup.” Not a coffee cup, but a small glass, like a juice glass. These are young reds that go down like grape juice. Small pours helps keep them at or just below cellar temperature. As they heat up they get a little raw and brassy.
So a small pour in a short, friendly “coppa” keeps the wine cool and easy to drink with pals or to chase down plates of Sunday macaroni dinner (spaghetti in North Denver parlance).
No, no
The “nevers?” Never serve wine in a ceramic or metal anything.
It reacts with glazes aluminum and is too much like drinking out of a dog bowl. Never drink wine through a straw. Blech. Try it if you don’t believe me.
Keep pouring instead of over-filling the glass.