During my travels, I have dined in many small restaurants and cafes where a lunchtime set menu often includes a carafe of house wine. This made me wonder how many glasses there were in a carafe of wine and whether all carafes of wine are the same wherever I go. I decided to go and …
Carl Walton
I saw my first wine cooler when I was 17 and visited the family wine farm for my summer vacation. At first, I thought it was just a fancy fridge with a glass door until my older cousin explained what it was and why it was necessary. A wine cooler is designed to keep red …
I have often experienced restaurants serving wine in a carafe while wine experts talk about the benefits of using a decanter for wine. So, I set about learning the differences to understand better how to get the maximum enjoyment from my wine. A decanter is just used for wine and has a wide base to …
I had once believed that you needed a fancy wine decanter to be able to decant wine. However, spending vacation time on wine farms and talking to winemakers, I learned that there are alternatives to using fancy decanters for decanting wine, including decanting wine in a bottle. It is possible to decant wine in a …
If you like wine, then this question has undoubtedly occurred to you. What types of wines need to be decanted, and which do not? Generally, younger red wines and some white wines do not need to be decanted, while older red wines and certain white wines can benefit from decanting. However, there are no hard …
There have been a few times in my life when opening a new bottle of wine has been rather unpleasant, with the wine somehow having gone bad inside the sealed bottle. So I set about finding out why this happens so that it hopefully doesn’t happen again. Any unopened bottle of wine will eventually degrade …
In the world of fine wines, France and California have emerged as powerhouses in the wine industry. At the Judgement of Paris wine tasting competition of 1976, two Californian wines beat the French wines. So, what makes French and Californian wines different? I went to a few tasting rooms to find out. Californian wine is …
Have you ever pushed a cork into a bottle of wine accidentally while opening it and wondered whether you can still drink the wine that has a cork in it? It has happened to me plenty of times, both accidentally and intentionally, when I haven’t had a corkscrew to open my wine. It is entirely …
When most people think of Spanish wine, they think of Rioja, Cava, and Sangria, though maybe not in that precise order. Spanish wine has a reputation for being cheaper and of lower quality than their French and Italian neighbors. However, while Spanish wine is cheaper thanks to mechanized farming practices, it is not lower quality. …
For a long time, I have wondered why Spanish wines had a bad reputation compared to neighbors France and Italy. The Spanish wines I have tasted are easily as good as more expensive French and Italian wines and, in some cases, tasted remarkably similar. Recently I got to spend 15 days at a Spanish winery …