These 3 Wine Hacks will improve your wine knowledge game and impress your friends with your innovative tricks. Plus, your wine will taste way better than the $8 you spent on it. Wine without all the ritual is just fermented grapes. Below we discuss wine etiquette for serving, storing and handling wine. Wine is a special beverage and in order to drink it, enjoy it and really understand what it is about, you need to learn and adopt a few things.
These 3 wine hacks are the foundation of what really makes wine a worthy drink. To begin with, we must consider how it’s served. If you think about it for a second: would it even be wine if it was sold in a plastic bottle or a just came out of a tap?
An Austrian glass-maker, back in 1986, introduced a separate line of wine glasses by the name of Vinum. These were inexpensive, machine-made crystal glasses made available in several shapes for various wine types.
Consumers were initially confused as they’d been used to sipping their wines from the regular glass cup. However, with the implementation of the new wine glass, wine tasters started noticing a difference in the taste of their wine.
The logic has now been firmly established as a permanent wine etiquette by creating specific glasses for Burgundy, Bordeaux, White, Sparkling, Port and so on. Each one aids in the perfecting of the bottled beverage.
As soon as our wine culture elevated to a superior level, we also created products that match our lifestyle including:
Just like tea, coffee, and your soda, each one has a perfect temperature, your wine is no different in that regard. At different temperatures, it will taste different.
Some of the more delicate strands of flavor may get subdued when really chilled or may taste unsavory when too warm. Following are useful guidelines for different types of wine.
RED WINE
Served best at slightly below the room temperature from 53 °F – 69 °F, while lighter versions of red wines such as Pinot Noir are better off at the cooler end of the range.
WHITE WINE
Served best between temperatures between 44 °F – 57 °F, zesty whites should be on the chillier side of the spectrum, while the oak-aged whites should be slightly more on the warm side.
SPARKLING WINE:
The not-so-expensive versions are good between 38 °F – 45 ° F, however, premium-quality champagne and sparkling wines should be served at the temperatures preferred for white wine.
If you are more of a wine man or woman with deeper pockets, know that severely chilled wines will mostly have subdued aromas. A wine above 70 °F will start to smell more alcoholic because of increased ethanol evaporation that occurs as the temperature rises. For those of you who enjoy the sparkly and a little fun... May I introduce you to The Chambong!
You’ve heard this a million times “Breathe”! Not only is breathing necessary for you… it’s also IMPERATIVE for most wines. Open up a red, pour it into a glass, take a sip and 😝 ! Holy tannins! We describe this as “tight”, what your wine needs is to “open up”. Often times this is done by decanting the bottle. When you “open up” the wine to air, it loosens up after a bit of time. We also have a hack to get this job done straight from the bottle. An aerator can be attached to the bottle and the wine is aerated or “opened up” as it pours through into your glass. Presto! Your wine is now ready to drink and tastes 100 times better!
While we know that there is so so much information about wine out there for you to consume, this is a great place to start. While you continue to do research grab one of these gadgets to impress your friends, especially when you buy a $5 bottle of wine at Trader Joes and your friend thinks it's a bottle you brought back from that Napa wine tasting trip last month.
Here are a few of my favorite wine accessories, I know you will love them too!
1. Sea Stones Glacier Wine Flight
2. Hands-Free Wine Glass Topper for Appetizers