The Wine Etiquette Guide - Your Defense Against Wine Snobbery. Chuck Blethen
rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_c26d7086-de14-52b4-98ed-748451608f5f.png" alt="droppedImage-4.png"/>
Foil cutters come in many shapes and sizes, but their function is the same – to cleanly cut the foil covering (capsule) on a bottle of wine so it can be poured easily and cleanly into a glass.
Serving Temperatures for Wines
“A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.”
- Chinese proverb
Wine is alive. It has a complex chemistry that changes with temperature and environment. It is important to store it properly and serve it at the correct temperature because the temperature at which a wine is served has an immense impact on its taste. Serving wine cool will mask some imperfections—good for young or cheap wine—while a warmer wine temperature allows expression of the wine's characteristics—best with an older or more expensive wine.
A bottle of wine will cool 2 °C (4 °F) for every ten minutes in the refrigerator, and will warm at about this same rate when removed from the refrigerator and left at room temperature—the temperature of the room will affect the speed with which the wine warms up. A temperature probe inserted through the cork of a bottle of wine placed in a refrigerator was recorded to take 2 hours and 45 minutes for the wine to reach 55 degrees from room temperature. If you need to chill a bottle of wine in a hurry, 35 minutes in the freezer will do the trick. Better yet is to place the wine bottle in a bucket of ice and fill it with water. Your wine will be chilled in 15 minutes. Here is a basic serving temperature guideline for various wines:
| Type Of Wine | Fahrenheit | Celsius |
| Sparkling | 42° to 54° | 6° to 10° |
| Rosé | 48° to 54° | 9° to 12° |
| White | 48° to 58° | 9° to 14° |
| Sherry (Light) | 48° to 58° | 9° to 14° |
| Red | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
| Fortified (Port) | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
| Sherry (Dark) | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
Temperature levels can camouflage defects in certain wines and heighten subtle taste experiences in others. A simple rule of thumb for cooling a wine is to watch the clock when you chill a wine. It takes about 10 minutes for a wine to drop 4°F (2°C) in the average refrigerator and the opposite to occur at room temperature.
Wine Glasses for all Occasions
“The fruits of all our labors have left us as we started.
To grow without is not to grow within.”
- Dave Winer
The shape of a wine glass can impact the taste of the wine, and for this reason different types of wine are served in different glasses.
The three main types of wine glasses are:
A - Red wine glasses: more rounded and have a larger bowl (fill 1/3 full)
B - White wine glasses: tulip shaped (fill 1/2 full)
C - Sparkling wine flutes: tall and thin (fill 3/4 full)
D – Water glass: (fill 3/4 full)
A suitable all-purpose wine glass should hold 10 oz, be transparent to allow the taster to examine the color of the wine and its body, and have a slight curve in at the top to hold in the bouquet. While an all-purpose wine glass is fine for serving a red wine, do not serve a white wine in a red wine glass. The finest wine glasses have paper-thin rims. Names of the finer wine glass manufacturers include Riedel, Schott-Zwiesel, Ravenscroft, Spiegelau and Rosenthal.
Wine glasses are crucial to the overall appreciation of a wine, and work in tandem with temperature. Complex aromas and tastes of a red wine are more easily distinguished when drinking from a glass with a paper thin rim.
At the end of the day, the shape of a glass plays a decisive role in the appraisal and enjoyment of a good wine.
Holding a Wine Glass
“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night.”
- D.H. Lawrence, Grapes
Hold a wine glass by its stem. Watch a well-trained bus boy or server at a restaurant setting a table or serving wine. The knowledgeable ones will always hold the glass by the stem as they set a table. Remember that one of the important steps in proper wine evaluation is "appearance." If you hold the wine glass by the bowl, rather than the stem, you will get fingerprints all over the glass. When tasting white wines, in addition to fingerprints, the warmth from your hands will unnecessarily warm up the properly chilled glass of wine.
Some women have complained that holding a wine glass by its stem feels unsafe or unstable. Extending your small finger to rest on or under the base will make it much more steady.
It is also acceptable to hold a wine glass by its base between your thumb and index finger (bottom of base resting on your index finger) if you are standing at a party for an extended period of time.
There have been recent wine glass developments by prominent glassmakers. They have brought forth wine glasses without stems. This is clearly an attempt to take advantage of the beer drinking society of America. Glasses without stems offer a more comfortable feel to those who are accustomed to drinking beer. It also offers a more stable base and makes quaffing wine more acceptable than sipping from a stemmed glass. Missing from this effort to appeal to the beer drinking society is the ultra thin rims of a quality wine glass. It may be a market fad but keep an eye on how these new drinking vessels affect future wine drinkers. I am clearly old school and prefer to drink my wine out of a stemmed glass with a paper-thin rim – the wine just tastes better.
Toasting
“It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.”
- Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), On the Universe
When you are trying to get everyone’s attention at a dinner party, do not clang your silverware on the side of a glass or plate. Banging your wineglass with a knife is quite uncouth. A loud whistle doesn’t do it properly either.
The best way is to speak up. Stand up with your wine glass in hand and say “Ladies and gentlemen! May I have your attention, please!” Allow a few seconds for everyone to stop what they are doing and turn their attention to you. Then lift your glass by the stem in the direction of the person(s) you are toasting with a motion that is an outward and upward arc until you can just barely see the toasted person’s eyes across the top of your glass. (Don’t lift your glass as if you are pointing to the ceiling in the famous Statue of Liberty stance.) “Here’s to my best friend, Bill, and his fiancée, Jill. May they continue to share their joy.” Then pull the glass back towards your lips and take a sip.
Everyone in the group who is raising their glass by the stem to toast should lift their glass in a like manner in the direction of the toasted person (not towards the person making the toast).