For The Wine Ho On The Go!

Now this is an accessory that every wine ho needs! Baggin the Box has just taken on a WHOLE new meaning if you know what I mean. Forget about sneaking candy and pop into the movies, sneak in your favorite drink!

If your a drunk or support a drunk you need to own this Baggy Wine Tote by Scandinavian Design Center.

My hats off to Jakob, the designer, who thought of this! What creativity, thinking of the true wino who hates drinking cheap house wines provided by certain establishments and needs to sneak in his/her top notch wine to movies, plays, and concerts discretely and under the radar.

This simply fabulous Bag n Box Tote retails for about $60 bucks. Get yours today.

Rapid Ice Wine Cooler

This weekend I invested in a VacuVin Rapid Ice Wine Cooler since I prefer my wines chilled. My private collection consists largely of red wines and in my opinion red wines are served to warm. This is a great little bar tool every wino should have. It is easy and doesn’t take up any space. Simply place it in the freezer six hours before you plan on drinking. When you are ready to drink your wine, you remove the rapid ice wine cooler from the freezer and slide over your wine bottle. In about five minutes your wine will be chilled and it keeps it chilled.

Thanks to heating and air conditioning, modern house temperatures are 68 to 73 degrees… I know people who keep theirs higher. Historically, the average room temperature was 55 to 65 degrees and this is the ideal serving temperature. You can quickly see why modern homes aren’t conducive for your wine and would be wise to invest in a wine storage cooler.

Red wines should be served between 55 to 65 degrees. As Master Sommelier Alpana Singh says:

Serving reds closer to their proper cellar temperature heightens the fruit flavor while lessening the alcohol aroma, giving the wine a more vivid structure with focused acidity.  She recommends drinking warm, rather than chilled, vodka to see the difference.

Cheap wines and lighter wines should chilled too. The grape acidity reacts to the cold in a way that makes the wine crispy and snappy, “brightening the wines acidity and heightening its fruitiness, giving it a crunchy, rich texture that will make the simpler or less expensive red wines taste richer and fuller,” says Alpana Singh from Alpana Pours.

Heavier and more complex wines should be served warmer…but not at modern day room temperatures.

Wine Type——————————–Serving Temperature
Sparkling (red, white, rose)                                     40-45
White                                                                                 45-50
Rose & light-bodied red                                             50-55
Medium-bodied red                                                     55-60
Full-bodied red                                                             60-65

To get a more extensive idea of what temperature your favorite wine should be served at visit Nuvo Vino’s Wine Temperature Chart and Wine Temperature Tutorial.

It is a good idea to invest in a Wine Thermometer to get the full essence from your wines.

What happens if the wine temperature is too high?
The higher the temperature, the faster the volatile compounds evaporate from wine in a glass. When red wine is served above 68°F, the alcohol can begin to evaporate so quickly that it unbalances the wine. This same effect happens with whites at about 58°F.

The palate is increasingly sensitive to sweetness the higher the temperature. Most sweet wines have low acidity in relation to their sweetness. When served too warm they taste cloyingly sweet. Chilling sweet wines tempers the sweetness while showcasing the acidity for balance.

With sparkling wines, the higher the temperature, the faster carbon dioxide is released. This not only creates overly frothy wines after opening, but they become flat very quickly.

What happens if the wine temperature is too low?
Quite simply, wine served too cold causes an imprisonment of important aromas derived from the grape. Whites and reds served too cool can taste rather dead, withholding their prominence. In the case of reds, tannins will taste rough and bitter. Serving reds warmer will soften those rough tannins. -Nuvo Vino Temperature Tutorial

A Wine Glass Worth A Thousand Words OR Just One?

When words can’t say what you are thinking! Get a Wine Glass! The wine glass that says, “Don’t think, just drink!”

The Wine Vacuum – Store It, Don’t Pour It!

Another handy dandy gadget every wino needs for their wine bar is the the Wine Vacuum. What the heck is a wine vacuum you ask! Well I’m going to try to explain it. Here goes nothing!

Often you buy wine and don’t finish the bottle for whatever reason but you don’t want to waste it and aren’t sure how to preserve it or if you are like me you like to experiment with lot’s of different wines every night and don’t wait for “special” occasions to drink, everyday is a special occasion in my book, hell I’m alive and super healthy that’s worth celebrating!  So there you are in your living room sitting back, feet up immersed into your favorite weekly series or book when you get up to go to bed only to realize you have half of bottle left. Damn it! Your liver is on overload but you don’t want to pour this yummy dinner down the drain…so you need an alternative.

What is one to do? Some would try to insert the cork back into the bottle with great strenuous effort and little success while others are a bit smarter and use decorative wine stoppers. The problem with the cork is that while you may get it back into the bottle it will more than likely suffer breakage and cracking which exposes the wine to oxygen. The decorative wine stopper while cute, also doesn’t stop oxygen from reaching the wine.

Why does that matter?
When you open a bottle of wine it is instantly exposed to air and when wine is exposed to air for any extended period of time, let’s say overnight,  it turns or rather is oxidized or spoiled which tastes flat or stale. In order to finish that lovely bottle of wine that you started you need to remove the oxygen from the bottle and the best tool to do this is a pump which comes in many styles and names. One of my favorite is the Vacu Vin Preserver for $10.99 which comes with one rubber stoppers. The idea behind the pump is that it sucks the air out of the bottle allowing you to get a one or two more days out of the wine. It won’t preserve it forever and every wine is different but I usually get one to two additional drinking days which is more than enough time for me to finish the bottle off before it spoils or goes flat and I don’t have to waste it!

Whether you purchase The VacuVin Pump or whatever, they should all “click” when you’ve successfully extracted all the air from the bottle. This doesn’t take a mental giant to work and is an added benefit to your wine tool kit and your pocket book. Make sure to purchase extra stoppers because more than likely your going to use them, especially if you entertain and have a few bottles of your favorite wine left!

Wine & Glass Guide! Very Cool

Last week I introduced you to the Nuvo Vino infrared wine thermometer and some really handy tools on their site that teach the importance of wine temperature and proper serving temperature for different wines. I found this site incredibly educational, my wine geek is shining through, and fun. I love sharing with you guys what I’m learning because I am educating you while I am learning myself.

This week I want to introduce another really cool site that in my opinion will come into play at some point in your wine drinking experience. Last week I was out with one of my best gal pal’s, Deb, and while we were sitting at the bar she asked me what the difference was between the different wine glasses. That is a great question which I tried my best to explain not knowing that much myself. This conversation got me thinking and the next day I started researching wine glasses and wine.

As I expected I found a great site and tool to explain and help every wine geek figure out what is what. Even if you don’t entertain but just want some basic knowledge on what wine goes with what glass you will really appreciate and have some fun on this site. Riedel (pronounced “Rhee-dl”) is the finest wine glass company in the world. They’ve been making wine glasses for over 250 years and eleven generations. Riedel has set the standard for delicate glassware with their unique glass blowing techniques. All other glass makers use Riedel as the measuring stick. Riedel has gone to great lengths to create a very comprehensive but simple wine and glass guide based on over 250 years of experience and their unique philosophy.  They have a glass for every wine you could possibly think of and spirits too! Their Wine & Glass Guide is a bookmark must every wine geek should have handy.

It is so simple even a caveman could do it. Simply go to the Wine & Glass Guide and click on the wine you are drinking and up pops several wine glasses to choose from! Some wines have more glass options. I would also like to mention that when I was in California I went to a Target store and to my surprise they had an entire Riedel wine glass display so don’t fret, while these can be expensive glasses they have made a line of more affordable glasses too!

Claus Riedel was the first person in the long history of the glass to design its shape according to the character of the wine. He is thus the inventor of the functional wine glass. He has worked with experienced wine aficionado’s, sommeliers and tasters to determine all that goes into helping bring the best characteristics out of a glass of wine.

Professor Claus J. Riedel was the first designer to recognize that the bouquet, taste, balance and finish of wines are affected by the shape of the glass from which they are drunk.

Fifty years ago he began his pioneering work to create stemware that would match and complement different wines and spirits. In the late 1950s, Riedel started to produce glasses which at that time were a design revolution. Thin-blown, unadorned, reducing the design to its essence: Bowl, stem, base.

Working with experienced tasters, Riedel discovered that wine enjoyed from his glasses showed more depth and better balance than when served in other glasses. Claus J. Riedel laid the groundwork for stemware which was functional as well as beautiful, and made according to the Bauhaus design principle: form follows function.

The glasses are designed to emphasize a wine’s harmony, not faults. Riedel has always viewed the wine glass as an instrument to bring together: the personality of the wine, smell, taste, appearance (including the beauty of the object).

To fully appreciate the different grape varieties and the subtle characteristics of individual wines, it is essential to have a glass which has a shape fine-tuned for the purpose. The shape is responsible for the quality and intensity of the bouquet and the flow of the wine.

The initial contact point depends on the shape and volume of the glass, the diameter of the rim, and its finish (whether it is a cut and polished or rolled edge) as well as the thickness of the crystal.

As you put your wine glass to your lips, your taste buds are on the alert. The wine flow is directed onto the appropriate taste zones of your palate and consequently leads to different taste pictures. Once your tongue is in contact with the wine three messages are transmitted at the same time: temperature, texture and taste. – Wine & Glass Guide

Some other fun & educational links:
Serving Temperatures
Wine Color  Guide
Stages Of Wine Tasting

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