So, what are your tips for serving and tasting techniques to get the most out of a wine?
So to get the most out of a wine you basically
need to start with a glass.
This is crucial. I've seen lots of examples
in my life when my friends or my clients buy
really good wines but when I come to their home,
the glasses are not right.
So this is taking like you know a
world champion in
running and telling that person to put their havaianas on to run a marathon.
Flipflops!
Flipflops, yeah. We can expect what kind of result you’ll get out of that.
So the same for the wine, you can take the best wine in the world
but if you’re going to put in a wrong glass,
the performance is not going to be the same for that wine. So I personally like Zalto glasses.
Ok. And this is a Zalto. Yes, this is a Zalto Bordeaux glass
and for me they are one of the best
glasses for wine.
So it has to be clear, enough volume to put the wine,
enough to swirl it,
enough area for wine to open up.
Like this? Yeah. The next
factor what you need to look at is the temperature of the wine.
Temperature of the wine is very important
and as a comparison we use it with the flower.
So if you look when it’s really cold, what happens to the flower?
It closes down, so you don’t see that beauty.
If it’s really really hot and the flower is not watered,
what it does, it just opens up and dies and it’s not beautiful
again. So when it’s a perfect
temperature, for the flower,
not too cold, not too hot
it shows all the beauty. The same with a wine,
when it’s really cold,
you know trying to take a red wine straight out of the fridge,
when it’s really cold, won’t be
able to smell much. When it’s too warm
it will be alcoholic and aggressive
in the flavours, ok so right temperature
is very important. I would say for red
wine, if it was in the fridge, you take it out, leave it for
half an hour that will be about the right temperature.
For white wine
of Bordeaux, taking out from a
wine fridge or from
just the regular fridge and you can serve it straight away,
it will warm up at the right temperature fairly quickly
in a glass. So temperature I would say number two.
Getting enough air for the wine to open up,
I would say as a tip if you’re not really
knowledgeable and experienced about wine,
when it comes to decanting
for little bit older wines, over 10 – 15
years old wines maybe better not to decant
if you’re not sure it’s needed to be decanted.
Better to pour in a glass and let the wine open up in the glass.
because once you decant a wine
there’s no way back.
So if you decant it and you’ve got
too much air,
your wine will be oxidised and you cannot put it back
and it will be nice and beautiful, that’s it done.
So to be on the safe side, young wines,
decant it because it needs time and air to open up.
Little bit older, if you’re not confident
better let it open up in a glass and it will just will need to be
a bit patient. Ok, after that smelling, so
having a good swill, so like I was saying,
when you’re willing a wine
the air get inside a wine and it lifts all
the beautiful aromas.
Ok, so this is what we do and the smelling,
again this should not be a gentle,
little smell. It needs to be a proper
proper smell, a proper wiff
and what I like what I like to call this 'stereo effect',
so go from one side
to another like that. Ok, so see it’s kind of these beautiful
aromas coming out
of this wine. The next
it’s taste, before the taste
it’s very important to smell wine
because when you’ve got a cold we say,
“ I cannot smell or taste anything” so the same
if you wouldn’t smell a wine, you taste hardly anything.
Because we only taste several things,
we taste sweetness, we taste bitterness, we taste acidity,
you taste Umami but if we turn
our nose senses off,
it’s hardly anything. So very important, smell
before you taste and afterward when we taste wine
it’s important that we cover our mouth all with
all of the wine because the different parts will taste
different things. So the way I do it personally,
I swirl,
I smell and after that I take a good sized sip,
enough to cover my mouth
Ok, I’m just going to follow you.
Wow, this is really nice.
And what I did as well, I forgot to mention,
I drew some air through the wine
so the same like in a glass, I try to do the same.
So I have some wine inside my mouth and I draw some of the air
through and it basically helps for flavours
to open up and sometimes what I do
I swallow wine in 2 kind of small parts; 1
and a 2nd.
And again that’s a fact as the flavours become more intense.
ok, and can we do that again? I’d like to see you
doing the oxygen thing
Oh I did one sip sorry. I did two. [laughter]
it’s very important like I said,
for the size of the glass and all those things you do.
Here you've got quite nice wide glass,
imagine if a glass would be much much more narrow,
so for all those complex, beautiful
aromas they would be kind of in a way
squashed. They need space.
So lets say you would take a beautiful
bouquet of flowers, yep. Once they all open,
it’s beautiful and imagine taking that bouquet
and you squash it and that beauty would
disappear and that’s the same as the wine
You put in a narrow glass, it will not be
beautiful.
wow. Thank you.
Very useful. So, cheers to you
cheers Stephanie, hopefully we see you next time
maybe in Bordeaux again!