So let’s have a toast to organic wine,
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It’s hard to prove, but everyday experience gives the theory some strong support. Ever notice how some wines change in the glass? How they start out with almost no aroma and little taste, and then, 15 minutes or an hour later, startle with seductive scents and luscious flavor? Or how the leftovers in a bottle taste better the day after it was opened?

The opposite happens, too. A wine tastes great for the first 15 minutes, but as it sits in the glass, it begins to taste duller, more acetic, less pleasant, as if it’s falling apart by the minute. Or the leftovers taste awful the following day.

The change in a wine from bottle to decanter won’t be as drastic as from one day to the next, but it can be significant. The thing is, you can’t know for sure how a wine will react. If the wine is simple and juicy, aeration probably won’t improve it; if it’s tannic, acidic, and very dense with concentrated fruit, it well might. At home, you can experiment. At a restaurant, leave it up to the opinion of the wine steward, who should have an opinion about these things.

How to Decant

In the simplest situations—a young wine that you want to decant just for the benefit of some air or a pretty container—all that needs to be done is to dump the wine from bottle into decanter.

With an older wine, it’s more complicated. If the wine is a special one you ordered earlier in the day, the sommelier will have stood the bottle up in a quiet place for the sediment to fall to the bottom.

If you ordered it that night, he’ll just carefully take it from the cellar and move it into a decanting rack, if he has one, which keeps the bottle at an angle, or stand it up, endeavoring not to rile it up.

Then comes the entertaining part: Out comes a candle along with the decanter. Over the candle, he’ll slowly pour the wine into the decanter. The light the candle throws helps him see when the sediment begins to flow toward the neck, so he can stop pouring before it comes out.

Often this will leave an inch of wine in the bottle. It might seem like a waste, but it’s better than a mouthful of grit.

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Decanting

Why do some people get to drink their wine out of beautiful glass decanters while the rest of us get it poured straight out of the bottle?

Most wine doesn’t need decanting; pouring it straight from the bottle is fine. Some wines, however, have a thick layer of gritty sediment at the bottom of the bottle that you’d rather not end up in your glass.

Some people, too, think that some wines benefit from extra air contact, and pouring them into a wide-bodied container will do just that. (So will shaking a glass up and down vigorously with your hand cupped over the top, but that’s a little messy and doesn’t look so good.)

Which Wines?

Wines that typically benefit from decanting are those that have been bound up in their glass bottles for the longest. These wines are likely to have “thrown some sediment”— that is, to have a layer of tannins, pigments, and other compounds that have fallen out of the solution to the bottom of the bottle. Decanting helps keep the sediment out of your glass.

Old wines can also develop “reduced,” vegetal aromas, or seem to have very little aroma at all, after they’ve been hidden away from oxygen for so many decades. Putting an old wine in a decanter lets it “breathe” a bit, or literally sit in the presence of oxygen, so that its aromas and flavors slowly unfold. In a wine with very mature flavors, though, the amount of oxygen it comes in contact with while going into the decanter can blur the line between old wine and vinegar.

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The tradition has favored women throughout history, being the receivers of flowers and chocolate.  These days, it’s OK to impress your man, ladies.  We are quite easy!  A nice bottle of wine, or port for that matter, does the job.  I might be partial here, but walk with me for a second….

After a long February 14th at work, you both are exhausted.  The last thing you want to think about is your run-of-the mill flowers and chocolate, and only one person gets those. (The ladies get off so easy!  Guys - if you are getting flowers and chocolate, we need to have a chat.)  Though the flowers are gorgeous and the chocolates decadent….we both know they don’t last.

So let’s say you still go the flowers and chocolate route.  Now, throw in a nice bottle of 2007 Caro Amancaya Malbec from Argentina, some candles, served in Tiffany wine glasses…now you are on a whole new level!  It’s the perfect gift from guy to gal (and I tend to be a biased male wine-lover).   A memorable evening of wine that lasts.  And of course, wine has healthy antioxidants!  (So does dark chocolate, but let’s forget that for a moment.  But if you can’t, Scharffen Berger 82% Cacao is the perfect pairing with wine.)

A perfect Valentine’s evening awaits!  I wonder what my wife got me this year….

WCI out

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In other instances, it’s perfectly acceptable to send the wine back, and you should expect it to be taken back without any argument.

If you ordered a wine at the same time you ordered your food, you have a reasonable right to expect that the wine will come to the table before the food arrives. If that’s the case and the wine arrives in the middle of the course, you can decline the bottle on the spot, before it’s opened.

When Good Wine Tastes Bad

It’s always a sinking feeling when you smell the splash of wine that the waiter’s poured for your tasting and find that the wine has spoiled. It might be corked (infected with TCA), or it might have turned to vinegar, or it might be refermenting. These things mean it’s ruined, and you’ll have the right to send it back. How do you recognize these faults? Like this:

• Corked wine: Sometimes it’s difficult to tell a corked wine from one that’s innocently musty, but often one whiff is all that it will take. A corked wine will smell like it’s been held in a cardboard box rather than in glass, or like an old, moldy attic. No tiling will repair this, and it won’t fade away, so you have to send it back.
• Vinegar: No wine should, by definition, smell like vinegar, so if a wine smells more appropriate for salad dressing than for sipping, send it back.
• Refermenting: Very occasionally, a wine will begin to referment in the bottle. This is an easy one to catch, as it will look fizzy, or at least bubble strangely on the tongue.

Sometimes a wine will have a vegetal or sulfurous stink to it; if it’s really bad (like it makes you cringe and pull back violently from the glass), that’s also grounds for refusal. But if it’s less disturbing than that, don’t worry it—those scents will probably dissipate as the wine sits in the glass.

If you’re not sure whether the wine is “sound,” that is, free of cork taint or any other problems, feel free to ask the wine waiter. He should be able to smell the wine and tell you. It’s his desire, of course, to see you enjoying your wine, so that you might order more and come back another time, or at least tell your friends about a great wine experience rather than a bad one at his restaurant.

It’s heartbreaking for a wine manager to clear a half-empty glass from a table at the end of the night and discover from a quick whiff that the wine was corked. There went an unhappy customer, no doubt, one whose wine troubles could have been avoided if only the wine guy had known. So speak up when you think the wine in your glass is faulty; it may well be, and then you can have it replaced.

Besides, restaurants can get a credit for the bad bottle from the distributor that sold it to them, so there’s no reason why the sommelier would want to see you drink a bad wine—and no reason you should feel guilty for sending it back.

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What do you do with the cork? Nothing. It used to be that the cork was presented so that you could check the name printed on it, and ensure that the wine in the bottle was the same as the label promised, not a bottle of plonk upon which some fraud slapped a fake label.

That used to happen with enough regularity that people felt it necessary to check the cork, but frauds come in slicker styles than label swaps these days, and IDing the cork probably won’t help.

As the Cork Crumbles

What if the cork is broken or crumbly? A broken cork could have more to do with the person who opened it than with the cork itself; the biggest problem there will be theirs, as it’s tough to extract it once it breaks.

If it does break and a few crumbs of cork fall into the wine, it won’t hurt anything. A quick splash into a glass should get rid of most of the offending pieces, and no off flavors will be transmitted.

If the cork is very wet and crumbly, and the wine isn’t decades old, there may be a problem, as that could be a sign that the fit wasn’t tight and so air may have seeped in. But you can’t know if it adversely affected the wine by looking at or smelling the cork. You have to smell and taste the wine.

The Tasting Pour

Now the waiter will pour a small amount into your glass, and stand back waiting for your response. What will you do? Exactly what you do whenever you taste wine.

• Swirl
• Smell
• Sip

If the wine tastes fine, then nod for the waiter to continue pouring. He’ll move on to the next person and fill the glass a little less than half full, so that there’s room to swirl the wine, and continue like so around the table before coming back to finish filling your glass up.

What happens, though, if the wine tastes bad? It all depends on the definition of bad.

You pay for a glass of wine but what you get is a glass that’s less than half full, What’s the deal? The waiter isn’t trying to rip you off; he’s giving you the room you need to be able to swirl the wine and fully appreciate its scent as well as its taste. In fact, it’s when the wine is poured all the way to the rim that it’s time to get miffed.

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In many restaurants, that is all that happens, and though it’s less embarrassing, it’s not with your best interests in mind. There is a possibility that the wine will be bad, and the tasting ceremony is your chance to find out and correct the situation.

Some parts of the tasting ceremony are more for show than for use, though, so here’s a primer in What to Do with That Cork, and other ways to handle the tasting ceremony coolly.

What to Expect

You might not feel comfortable when all eyes at the table train on you as the waiter presents you with the wine, but you should be mighty glad you have that chance. The waiter brings the wine to you so you can …

• Make sure it’s the one you ordered.
• Make sure it tastes like it should.

If it’s not the bottle you ordered, or it is but doesn’t taste like it should, this is your chance to reject it and request it be replaced with the correct bottle in good shape. Think about it: The embarrassment the tasting ceremony might cause is nothing compared to what would happen were a bad bottle poured all around.

Sometimes it pays to smell the glasses before the wine is even poured. Soap or damp rag smells can add unpleasant notes to a perfectly good wine.

This moment, however, is not a chance to decide you don’t like what you’ve chosen. Let’s go through the steps so you’ll know exactly what to expect and how to handle it.

Check the Label

The waiter should give you time to check the name, vintage, and any other identifying information on the label to make sure it’s what you ordered. (If he’s really good, he’ll point out all the salient information for you, as it’s sometimes hard to make the details quickly in a dark restaurant.)

Once you’ve determined that it is indeed the wine you ordered, he’ll step back and open the wine. When he’s uncorked it, he’ll put the cork on the table.

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The typical American cuisine restaurant carries more California Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet than anything else, because those are wines that sell without effort. That leaves less room for other categories, and those other wines take more effort to sell so the sommelier has to be pickier, especially when it comes to price/quality ratio.

Search for the quirks. A Slovakian wine is not going to fly out the door, so someone must have put it there because he or she liked it.

Is there a bizarrely grandiose Austrian wine selection? An out-of-proportion array of Australians? Is the Burgundy section bursting at the seams? You can bet these areas are where the wine manager’s heart lies, where he can’t control himself—thus the eyecatching length, and perhaps a lower markup.

The least expensive wine may be good, or it might simply be on the list to hit a “price point.” The most expensive wine, on the other hand, often bestows status more than anything. Typically, most people buy wines that fall in the middle price range of the list or just above. The sweet spot, however, is usually right under the median price. These are the wines that the sommelier needs to work harder to sell, since people don’t gravitate there naturally, and therefore they have to be good.

Scan the list for familiar names, and check whether the prices are higher than normal (on average, a restaurant bottle sells for about twice its retail price). If so, there may be no bargains here, and so it’s safer to play toward the bottom of the list.

If the list just offers White Zinfandel and big-name, bargain-priced reds and whites, order a margarita and save your wine drinking for another list. Life is just too short for bad wine, and it’s an insult to good food. Eventually, the restaurant might ask itself why everyone is drinking margaritas instead of Riesling and change their ways. But you’ll be gone by then. Too bad for them.

Steer clear of “cult wines,” those big-name, hard-to-find wines with prices inflated by high scores from wine critics. Unless you’re dining with a label hound, there’s always a better buy for the money.

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The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out how it’s set up.

Wine lists come in all shapes and sizes, from a laser-printed piece of paper to an oversized leather portfolio. The look of the list won’t tell you much but the level of pretension, though.

There are three major ways to design a wine list: Throw money at it, stocking the cellar with all the wines you can afford; hand it over to your wine distributor, who will fill it up with wines they will make good money on; or pick and choose a manageable amount of wines carefully tailored to the style of the restaurant’s cuisine, prices, and vibe.

All three methods can lead to good lists, and all have the possibility of ending badly, so give the list a hard look. In a big list, look to see how they’ve filled the space. Does it read like the catalogue for a wine store, with lots of everything and nothing that stands out, or is the list a treasure trove of older vintages, hard-to-find wines, and “verticals,” different vintages of the same winery’s wines? Does it have a slant that suggests the list is so big because the sommelier can’t contain himself when it comes to his favorite country’s wines?

In a small list, does it offer some interesting options beyond the usual Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon? Do the prices feel reasonable compared to those for the food?

How’s the list arranged? There are no rules here. The traditional method, modeled after wine lists in Old World countries like France where wines are typically labeled by the region in which they grew, is to group wines by country, and within country by region.

That works well if you know a lot about a country’s wines, but it can leave the rest of us out. Therefore, a lot of restaurants in the United States have taken to arranging wines by grape variety.

The downfall here, as you know by now, is that not all Merlots, for instance, are created equal, and the range of styles can make choosing by variety a bit of a minefield.

Look for half-bottles on wine lists: They can be a boon to couples who’s like one wine for appetizers and another for entrees, and don’t want two full bottles. Half-bottles can also be a good way to try something that’s too expensive in a full-sized bottle.

Many restaurants compromise by arranging the wines by style. The divisions might be as straightforward as light, medium, and heavy, but usually they are also whimsical, like “light and flirty” and “big and brooding,” or “librarian types” and “hussies.”

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