Serving Wine

When buying glasses choose those that have long stems, wide bowls and taper towards the top ie. are tulip shaped. These type glasses allow the aromas of the wine to be fully appreciated. Glasses also need to be of decent size and then never fill them more than a third full. Broadly speaking a white wine glass should hold about 20cl/7 fl oz and a red wine glass about 35cl/12 fl oz. All your glasses should be made from plain glass, not coloured, patterned or crystal.

When laying the dinner table all the glasses should be placed at the top right corner of each setting. Furthermore, the glass for the first wine should be nearest your right hand and so on. A glass for water needs to be tall and straight-sided and should be placed slightly above the line of wine glasses.

Nowadays people tend to drink red wine too warm and white wine too cold. Too much heat subjects the wine to a form of cooking that breaks down and dissipates the flavours. Too low a temperature and most of the flavours are hidden and the wine simply acts as a thirst quencher. Sometimes, with poor quality wine, this is not a bad idea! In general, we suggest that you adhere to the following guidelines:

Low quality sparkling wines and dessert wines : 5-6C/41-43F

Dry white wine, rose, sheer and champagne : 9-10C/48-50F

Red wines of a light style (eg. Beaujolais, NZ Pinotage) : 12-13C/54-55F

Most other reds and fortified wines : 15-16C/59-60F

Please note that 15-16C/59-60F is not room temperature. It is 3-4C below room temperature.

The classic order is to start with a dry aperitif such as fino sherry or champagne leading to a dry white with the first course then to a red with main and either a sweet wine with dessert or port with cheese or perhaps both. However, menus do not always allow for this. For example, a liver pate followed by a fish main course will neccessitate a sweet wine follwed by a dry white. The trick here is to allow a pause between the courses and to make that everybodys water glass is full. This way their palate can cleaned and the flavours of the pate and sweet wine dispersed before embarking on the next, more delicate phase of the meal.

One of principle to bear in mind when choosing your wines is that they should run from relatively ordinary wines to a more illustrious bottle thereby creating a momentum up to a pinnacle - yes a bit pompous but it does work.

Many people ask how long a wine needs to be opened before consumption so as to be as its peak. Well there are no hard and fast rules but normally white wines no time at all whilst reds vary. Generally the younger the wine the more time it needs. This is due to the fact that aeration helps to soften up the tannin in young red wines making then more pleasant to drink. Thus an hour can improve these wines greatly. Older wines tend to need less time with 30 minutes sufficing.

Decanting should be always be done in the case of vintage ports and red wines that are 8 or more years old. Try to allow these bottles to have stood upright for 3 or 4 days before decanting. This way the sediment will have settled at the bottom of the bottle and therefore the wine will be easier to decant.