When you are out dining, choosing the perfect bottle of wine is easy. You browse through the menu and choose what you are eating and then differ to the house sommelier to assist in pairing wine based on your food selection. Sommeliers will ask your taste preferences but will use their lexicon of industry knowledge to complement and enhance your meal with a great bottle of wine. But for those who are not familiar with wine, or just looking to choose a good one, understanding the basics about wine will go a long way.
To start, the basics of wine are broken out into five categories: sweetness, acidity, tannin, body and alcohol. This may seem simple but choosing the correct wine is an extremely complicated task. Do you want a sweet or semi-sweet wine? One that is more tart or low-acidic richer wines? More tannings for a dry and bitter finish? Prefer a light or heavy body? A warming higher alcohol content or lower alcohol content? Each person’s taste buds are unique so the perfect wine will differ for each drinker but picking a good bottle of wine hinge on understanding these five concepts. Besides just these five categories, understanding labels and price points and picking for the occasion are also key.
If you are new to wine, studies show that most people start off with a sweet white or rose wine, before enjoying the more complex profiles of dry reds or whites. Understand your taste preferences as this will help decipher which type of wine you like. For those who enjoy sharp and bitter flavors like dark coffee, more acidic wine will most likely fit with your pallet while those who lean towards desserts while enjoy a sweet white. And if you are looking to pair a wine with your meal, general rule of thumb is that red wines go with heavier meatier dishes while white wine goes with lighter dishes like vegetables and fish.
The goal for choosing a wine to pair is to choose one that complements or contrasts the flavors of your email. Foods with citrus and acid should be paired with a wine with high acidity while salty food can be paired with a sweet wine which will cut the saltiness of the dish. Also, foods and wines from the same region at times can make great parings.
When at the store, or shopping online, don’t get fooled by a fancy label. Make sure you read the label instead of being swayed by the eye-catching illustrations, fancy fonts or clever names. Look for the winery name, grape varietal and where the grapes grew, the year of harvest and the alcohol percentage. On top of look at these key indicators, make sure to have the five basic characteristics: sweetness, acidity, tannin, body and alcohol in mind when reading the description of the wine on the back.
Common perception with wine is that older is better, but that isn’t always the case. Only some wines taste better with age as this depends on a number of factors from the region the grapes were grown, amount of acid, tannin and more. Regardless, when purchasing a wine bottle, general rule of thumb is to drink it within five years of purchasing so the wine doesn’t go bad.
