You'd never catch a wine buff drinking out of coloured glass, even a glass with a coloured stem. A good wine glass is made of plain, clear, uncut glass, and has a tulip-shaped bowl. And somehow, wine always tastes finer out of thinner glass. You also need a glass of reasonable size, to allow room above the wine for the aromas to gather. And space, if you're a real wine buff, to give the wine a good, aroma-releasing swirl without spattering yourself and your neighbours with fly-away drops.
If you're a real perfectionist, you can even buy glasses designed to make different styles of wine taste their best - a Chardonnay glass, a Bordeaux glass, a Shiraz glass. It's hard to believe until you've actually tried the experiment, that the taste of the same wine will alter depending on which shape of glass from which you taste. Of course, you don't need a vast armoury of different glasses. It's good to have a set of tall, narrow-topped tulip-shaped glasses for Champagne and sparkling wines. Bubbles escape less quickly from the narrow surface.
Otherwise, one set of largish, tulip-shaped, fairly thin-walled glasses will do justice to most wines - something at least the size of the traditional 'red wine glass'.
A big glass doesn't mean you have to drink more wine. Whatever the glass, it should be filled to no more than two-thirds capacity. Really large glasses need no more than a normal wineglass measure in the bottom. The 'large glass, two-thirds full' rule goes for sherry and port, too, though you might use a slightly smaller glass than for other wines.
Personally we rarely change glasses between wines - anything to avoid washing up! If the previous wine is likely to taint the next wine's flavour r colour, we'd pour a little of the second wine, give it a swill around the glass, drink it, and then pour a proper serving. You might want to change glasses for a very formal meal, or when changing from a very dark red wine to a white.
Glasses that smell of washing-up, old dish-cloths or cupboard can spoil a wine. Always rinse glasses in clean, soap-free water after washing, and dry with a fresh, clean towel. Don't lace the inside of your glass cupboard with polish or other cleaning products. And glasses stored upright generally seem to smell better.
Throw away the wine thermometer - you don't have to go so far as to take a wine's temperature. But you can reduce your drinking pleasure by serving a wine too warm or too cold.
All whites and rosés taste better chilled. They taste brighter and fresher. Fuller, more alcoholic whites taste more flavourful a little warmer than fridge temperature: expensive Chardonnays, good white Burgundies, big Australian Semillons, for example, might benefit from coming out of the fridge ten minutes or so before you want to drink them. But they'll soon warm up in the glass if you serve them straight from the fridge.
Lighter, inexpensive, low-tannin reds can benefit from cooling, too, especially in the summer, and/or at a party or picnic. You might try chilling Beaujolais or Beaujolais-Villages, lighter red Loire wines, northern Italian reds including Bardolino and simple, inexpensive Valpolicella. This doesn't work with tougher, firmer, more tannic reds.
Remember how the tannin in tea tastes tougher when cold? It's the same with wine tannin.
'Room temperature' was always the rule for these bigger, firmer reds. That was in the days before central heating. The room temperature of the average house in winter is probably on the warm side for wines. Ideally, serve red wines cool rather than warm. But don't worry too much - your room temperature will probably do, and if a red is too cool, you can always warm it up by cupping your hands around the glass once the wine has been poured.
What do you do in an emergency? For instant chilling it's worth investing in a Rapidice chiller-sleeve These bottle-hugging sleeves are filled with freezer-fluid, and, kept in the freezer till required, they'll chill a bottle within ten minutes. Next best is an ice bucket or vase, filled with lots of ice and water (icy water works better than ice alone). A short spell in the freezer is also effective. But don't forget the bottle - separating the shattered glass from the frozen peas is a hazardous business.
Don't worry about the order in which to serve different types of wine -just suit each dish individually. There's nothing to stop you serving a red with the starter and a white with the main course if that's what goes best with the food. But a word about puddings and desserts. Sweet foods make red wines taste tough and fruitless; they make dry white wines taste dull and fruitless. Try it and see.
Why not serve a sweet wine with the pudding or dessert? If you have a cheese course as well, consider following the French example of cheese-before-pudding, so that the red wine can follow through from the main course. Or do it the English way, pudding-before-cheese, but choose cheeses from the food with wine section that go with sweet wines or port.
According to old wine lore, you should open red wines an hour or so before drinking them. Personally, we always open our red wines moments before drinking - whether the wine is cheap or expensive, young or mature. The open-early theory is that any 'bottle stink' will escape, while the air will get to the wine and start to soften if. Scientists have shown that that tiny disc of wine-surface in the bottle-neck is too small for the air-contact tomake any difference.
Opening early might be an advantage in two cases. 'Bottle stink' is the first. This is cover-all term for a number of smells caused by sulphide compounds that sometimes accidentally develop during winemaking. You may detect 'hot water bottles' or, at worst, 'rotten eggs'. Again, that tiny disc of wine in the bottle-top will probably be too small to allow much of this to escape. Sloshing the wine roughly into a jug will be more effective. If the smell is still there, slosh the wine back and forth between two jugs until it disappears.
Young tough reds might also be softened a little by the same treatment - early opening and sloshing into a jug.
advise against early opening for fine, elderly, mature reds - and especially against early decanting. Mature wines can fade quickly after opening. They can be so fragile that that tiny bit of air exposure in the neck does have an effect. It can tip them over into senility. Really old wines can fade and die in a matter of minutes after the air-exposure of decanting. If you do it too early, you may lose much of the subtlety and pleasure the bottle had to offer. If you are serving old vintages, open them between courses, just before serving.
You don't need to decant most wines. The main reason for decanting is to remove any sediment in the bottle. If poured with the wine, it might make it cloudy, and the last glassful might be crunchy! But nowadays, fewer wines throw a sedi-ment. Many modern wines are treated by various means, including chilling and filtration, to ensure that sediment won't form. And anyway, the formation of sediment takes time, often years. Modern wines tend to be made to drink young and fruity. And you can drink them right down to the last dregs, poured directly from their bottle.
There are exceptions - usually expensive, elderly ones! Vintage port, mature fine Bordeaux or Rhône wines, mature Barolo, mature Cabernet Sauvignons or other big, expensive red wines, all these are likely to have a perfectly natural gritty or sludgy deposit in the bottom or on the side of the bottle. It's a mixture mainly of natural salts, tannins, and colouring matter. Even in a younger, expensive red wine, a solid deposit is a good sign (rather than a reason to return the bottle!).
It means the wine has been treated less by the winemaker, so as to retain more of its flavours. It is only these exceptional bottles that you need to decant - pouring the wine gently off its dregs into another container - to ensure that every glass you pour will be clear. The new container need not be a priceless antique decanter - a clean, odour-free, detergent-free jug will do fine. If your bottle has been stored on its side, it's worth standing it up for a day or two to allow the gunk to settle at the bottom of the bottle. The aim is to get as much clear wine as possible off the sediment, in one continuous, gentle tip of the bottle.
In order to see the sediment, you'll need a light source underneath the bottle. It's fun and romantic with the traditional candle, but a torch will do the job. If your hand has been steady, you should end up with no more than half a glass of dregs. Don't throw them away - add them to a meat sauce or gravy to enrich the flavour. Mature, elderly wines often fade quickly after decanting. Old vintages are best decanted between courses, and poured straightaway.
