Hi my name is Amelia Singer
and I'm a wine expert, TV presenter on The Wine Show,
and I run my own wine tasting and consultancy business,
Amelia's Wine.
Everyone thinks red wine and cheese is really great.
Okay, I know it's really romantic, and it's the iconic
image of a Valentine's Day, or some kind of rom-com,
but, guys, it really doesn't do justice
to either the wine or the cheese.
If you really love both, then think about this.
So, effectively cheese can have quite a lot of acidity,
particularly goat's and sheep's cheeses, and hard cheeses.
And when you match it with a red wine,
which often doesn't have the same acidity,
and actually normally has quite a bit of tannin and alcohol,
what's going to happen is it's going to clash,
and only exacerbates the acidity and the tannin
and the alcohol levels.
It's going to dry out your wine
and it's going to completely dry out your cheese, no go.
My own personal pet peeve is that white wine is served
too cold and red wine is served too warm.
Why is this important?
Well, when a wine is cold, it basically mutes it
and means that it's not able to express its aroma
and its full range of flavor compounds.
Now, if you have a really cheap
insipid white wine, that's fine.
My mother's Pinot Grigio with ice.
However, if you are having something more complex
or something which is really meant to be fruity
and perfumed, then take it outside the fridge,
maybe pour it in your glass
and just let it open up a bit for five minutes.
Same thing for reds, often particularly with really light,
aromatic, juicy red wine, shove that red wine in the fridge
for half an hour, take it out and then
you'll find that instantly the aromas
will become way more intense,
it will be fresher and fruitier,
and then what's quite fun is you can just see
how it evolves in your glass.
Sometimes, like people, wine just needs to like,
breathe, and chill out, before you're going to get
it's true potential, and particularly if you've got
really alcoholic muscular red wine and it's very young.
You know, it's kind of got lots of testosterone
and you're just like, "Chill out," you know.
So, just open it up, you need to pour it out,
you can pour it out into a decanter,
if you want to be posh, or you can pour it into a water jug.
Basically anything that will allow the wine to aerate
and release its flavor compounds.
In regards to wine glassware,
people can get really stressed out, which, again, is sad.
Like, literally, if you have a beautiful wine,
you've only got a mug available, just go for it.
However, if you really want to taste and appreciate
the nuances in your glass of wine, it can make a difference.
You really want to keep the bubbles in your sparkling wine.
Carbon dioxide can basically travel up the glass
and keep the bubbles bubblier when you have a flute,
which is this here, and always,
you want to hold it down here,
because you don't want to heat up your sparkling wine.
You can hold a red wine glass like that
if you want to warm up your red wine,
that is perfectly, perfectly acceptable.
And I have sometimes done it, this is a white wine glass,
when someone serves me 'whice', you know,
white wine which is as cold as ice
and you then can't taste anything.
So, then, if I want to warm it up,
then it's perfectly acceptable.
By keeping it narrower, and keeping the bowl smaller,
you can concentrate the perfume
and you can also keep it cooler.
So, this would be perfect for your Sauvignon Blancs,
your Rieslings, anything citrusy, juicy, perfumed.
Something like this is great.
To really actually help along with
the aeration process, do give it a swirl,
there is a reason why wine people swirl their glasses,
it's not purely to be pretentious,
it actually does really help with the tasting process.
Never do that on a first date,
but it is amazing when you really want to appreciate
what's going on and I'm getting kind of,
like, sour, tangy, dried cherries,
redcurrants, it's really refreshing.
But, I would definitely say, if you're bringing the wine
straight form the fridge and it's more concentrated,
give it a little bit of help with
a kind of slightly smaller flute area
and rim area to sniff from,
because it just keeps everything together really prettily.