A colleague at work this month got bought a very expensive £85 bottle of Burgundy white wine (a Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru) this month for his birthday and didn’t enjoy it – he doesn’t enjoy classic oaked chardonnay although he loves Chablis which is another Burgundy white. Such a waste! It just shows that you need to develop some knowledge of wine before buying fine wines either for yourself or as a present and also know the taste of the person you are buying for. Joining a wine group like Tongham Tasters and coming along to other wine events such as our Tongham Village Hall wine tasting dinners will help you gradually develop that knowledge of both your taste and of wines.
Having bought a fine wine, one also needs to treat it with care and consideration when storing, serving and drinking it. On Christmas day I served a 2004 Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Alsace Riesling white wine. This is a lovely wine but initially I served it too cold and it tasted very ordinary indeed. However, after an hour it gradually warmed up and tasted wonderful. So be very careful with wine temperatures and read your wine book for the ideal temperatures and invest in a wine bottle thermometer in order to serve correctly.
Good wine glasses also make a difference and I really love my Riedel glasses, even though they represent quite an investment and are only for when Jane and myself share a really good bottle of wine. Whatever, you do need glasses which are quite thin and a reasonable shape to enjoy good wine.
Also take care of your wines when storing as they should avoid extremes of heat and cold and also rapid temperature cycling. Thus a car garage or loft or by a radiator are not good places to keep wine even for a short time.
Finally, be careful when pouring the wine as a young wine might need aerating to get the best out of it and with an older wine might need decanting to avoid a mouthful of sediment.
To learn some of the rudiments do go to a really good website such as
The Wine Doctor
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment