We all know at least one wine snob who insists on decanting the wine to “let it breathe”
and swirling his glass and saying things like he can smell the gooseberry notes.
But is there any merit to this pretentious pomp and circumstance?
To get you some top shelf wine knowledge, we went to UC Davis and talked to wine experts
Susan Ebeler and Hildegarde Heymann then hopped back over to the east coast and interviewed
Mandy Oser who is the sommelier and co-owner of Ardesia in New York City.
So let’s play a little fact or fiction.
Fact vs Fiction: The shape of the glass affects the taste
You have your burgundy, Bordeaux, large, small, standard, tulip, vintage, flute, tumbler,
port and just, like way too many choices.
Or at least to the untrained eye.
That's right.
This is a fact.
The shape of the glass really does affect the taste of the wine, even though it sounds
made up.
Most of the wine flavors people talk about--fruit, chocolate, gasoline-- aren’t tastes, but
smells.
Here’s Mandy to explain how that affects your palate.
The style of glassware is helping to concentrate the aromas, which helps to enhance your experience
with the wine.
So big, wide wine glasses help get those scents into your nose by increasing the surface area
of the wine and giving aroma molecules a better chance to diffuse into the air in the glass.
There are also some chemical changes that can happen when wine interacts with air, reactions
with oxygen and other compounds that add new layers to a wine’s aroma.
And yes, the wine maker did intend for this to happen.
But white wine?
It just needs a little less headspace to release its aromas.
So that’s why you often see whites in this smaller, more narrow, narrowly opened glasses.
Fact vs Fiction: Swirling your glass and slurping your wine enhances the flavors.
This is a fact so get your slurp on.
Smell is the same reason experienced wine drinkers will swirl a glass before they drink.
You’re just introducing the liquid to oxygen, and what’s it’s doing, simply, is releasing
those flavor compounds into the air so you can perceive them and experience them.
What’s cool is then you can see it change as the wine is out in the air for a greater
length of time so you can start to perceive differences in how it’s involving.
And it’s the reason why wine aficionados are always doing that annoying thing where
they slurp the wine into their mouth then do a weird sorta whistling thing instead of
just drinking it like a normal person.
“Mmmm.
A good year.”
That big rush of air helps get aroma molecules up the passageway that connects the back of
your mouth to your nose, so you can get the full flavor of the wine.
Fact vs. Fiction: Hmm yes I can sense notes of vanilla, and pepper, and peach, and hand
sanitizer and bull fecal matter.
This is true.
All those ridiculous flavors are in the wine.
Sommeliers aren’t just making those flavors up.
When they talk about grass or grapefruit or tobacco notes, there’s a good chance it’s
because the wine they’re drinking shares some of the same molecules with whatever they’re
smelling, but grapefruit or Bell pepper isn’t actually in your wine.
Those compounds can come from the grapes used to make the wine, the yeast that ferment it
or from the wood barrels some wine is aged in.
Fact vs Fiction: You Need to Let Your Wine Breathe
Every wine nerd worth their grapes knows the first thing you do when you open a bottle
of wine is to let it rest in the bottle or a decanter.
Ehhh.
It depends.
Decanting used to be more important when wines tended to have more sulfur dioxide in them,
especially for white wines.
Ess Oh Two in its dissolved form is sulfite.
This sulfite kills bacteria and can still be used as a preservative today, but it’s
not used as heavily as it used to be.
It also has an off smell, so resting your wine gives the sulfur dioxide a chance to
evaporate away.
With less of it used in modern wines, that’s not really that necessary, although off-smells
can over power the more delicate aroma of white wines, so letting your whites breathe
can be useful.
Also in case you’re wondering, sulfite is not the reason you get a hangover from red
wine.
Trust us.
But there is still a good reason to decant your wines.
Let’s have Mandy explain why.
Sediment is often found in older wines, maybe 5-10 years old.
Red wines, where there are some compounds and tannins that are falling out of the liquid
and if you don’t remove them from the liquid they’re going to impart bitter flavor when
you drink the wine and it’s a grainy texture.
Some sediment is a mass of biological molecules from the grapes themselves: pigments, proteins
and sugars.
You might also find crystals of potassium bitartrate--which are natural to grapes.
So you might want to decant your older wines.
Or if your wine is labelled “unfiltered”, “natural” or “biodynamic.”
And maybe others - it’s hard to be complete when talking about food and drink.
You could also go wild and experiment on your own.
Decant half a bottle, then cork what remains and leave the two side by side for half an
hour or so.
Taste them both and see what you prefer.
Fact vs. Fiction: A $100 Bottle of Wine is Better Than 2 Buck Chuck
Now, some people are willing to fork over a lot of money for a good wine.
But is there really a difference between a hundred dollar bottle and two buck chuck?
A factor of fifty difference?
There is good news and bad news here folks.
The bad news is yes, there really is a difference.
More expensive wines use grapes that are healthier and in better shape before they’re pressed
into juice.
The grapes are handled more carefully like precious newborn babies.
This helps ward off bad flavors that could come from damage or rot.
And the wine will probably be aged in higher quality barrels too, adding more to the flavor.
But the good news is, who cares?
If you like how a cheap wine tastes, go hog wild.
Taste is subjective!
You could drop a hundo on a bottle of wine and hate it.
Just because it has a higher price tag doesn’t mean it’s a magical tasting wine.
Fact vs Fiction: Serve red wine at room temperature and white wine straight of the fridge.
Let’s say, just for arguments sake, that you did order that hundred dollar bottle,
a white.
The sommelier pours your glass, you raise it to your mouth and sip, and it’s--WARM?!
Do you spit it out?
Throw it in his face?
Act like this is singularly the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?
That som’s actually right.
I bet you didn’t know most Americans drink their whites too cold and their reds too warm.
Temperature is the measure of how fast molecules are moving.
When they’re moving faster, more of those aroma compounds can escape into the air and
get up your nose.
The flip side is a colder wine will have less flavor.
So a non-frigid white will give more of its delicate flavors, while a too-warm red could
be a little too powerful for your schnoz.
An experienced wine drinker will aim for between warm and cold.
Like a grown-up Goldilocks, somewhere in the middle is juuust right.
I think one good rule of thumb especially if you’re at home is pop your red wine in
the fridge for maybe 15 minutes before you’re ready to serve it and theh at the same time
you could actually take your white wine out of the fridge and let that warm up a little
bit.
Fact vs Fiction: Drink red wine with red meat and white wine with fish
Everyone knows you drink red wine with meat and white wine with fish, right?
Well, that’s not true.
So I find wine and food pairings so interesting and I think a lot of the old standard rules
are obsolete.
So for example I think that what is more important with pairings is to look the type of sauce
or the garnish you have with the dish versus oh this is just meat or fish.
For example, say you’re serving a nice meaty halibut, it’s a very dense fish and maybe
you’re serving it with a red wine sauce, that could actually end up over powering a
delicate white wine and you probably want to choose something like a pinot noir with
a dish like that and even some meats can pair nicely with a robust white wine.
The biggest thing to remember is it’s your taste buds.
Drink whatever you want.
Even if it’s this:
So now you know the facts to be as pretentious with your wine as you’d like.
Heck I’ve been slurping a Chardonnay like a housewife at Napa Valley this entire video.
The more you know, right?
So pour yourself a glass of whatever you like and browse some more of our videos.
They too, get better over time.
We want to say thank you thank you thanks to Susan Eblere and Hilldegarde Heymann at
UC Davis for lending us their time and experience and thank you so much to Mandy Oser at Ardesia
in NYC.
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