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Here is a collection of the most commonly asked questions or FAQ
concerning wine appreciation or knowledge. More will be added as more questions come in.
| Q #19 : How long can unopened Champagne be stored? |
| A #19 : Non-vintage Champagne is normally sold after an aging process and is hence ready to drink when released. However, non-vintage Champagne can still be kept for another 3-4 years and any further cellaring is discouraged. Vintage Champagne should be drunk within 3 to 10 years of its vintage. |
| Q #18 :Should desserts be sweeter than the wines served with them? |
| A #18 : Generally no. If the dessert is too sweet, it will overwhelm the wines’s sweetness giving the wine a bland taste. Which is bad especially if the sweet wine is the highlight. |
| Q #17 : What is the main source of wine bottle corks? |
| A #17 : The bark from cork-oak trees in Portugal and Spain are the principal suppliers. The bark is harvested about 10 years and some trees have been known to yield bark for more than 250 years. |
| Q #16 : Has Champagne always been a sparkling wine? |
| A #16 : No. It was a still wine until the 17th century when a Benedictine Monk named Dom Perignon is credited with developing the Champagne method of putting bubbles in the bottle. On his first sip, he exclaimed, “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” |
| Q #15 : Why do people decant their wines? |
| A #15 : Decanting, which is to transfer the wine from a bottle to another container, is done for the purpose of aerating the wine or to remove sediments from the wine. Aerating a wine is sometimes necessary to allow off-odors to escape from an older wine or to soften the harshness of young wines. |
| Q #14 : What wine goes best with curry chicken? |
| A #14 : Most, if not all wines do not go very well with any curry dishes especially if coconut is used. However, some have ventured and they recommend matured and oaked Chardonnays or Riesling. |
| Q #13 : Why is using a crystal glass for tasting better? |
| A #13 : Generally, the thinner the rim of the glass, the better the wine will taste. Due to its stronger structure, crystal stemware can be made thinner than glass and hence contribute to the overall tasting. |
| Q #12 : Do I serve my red wine at “room temperature”? |
| A #12 : Unless your “room temperature” is around 15-20 °C, you’ll need to chill your wine. The easiest is to keep it in the commercial fridge and take it out half an hour before serving. A short dip in the ice bucket would do as well. |
| Q #11 :What are “Reserve” wines? |
| A #11 : The “reserve” wines of many vineyards are supposed to be wines that are of better quality than the non-reserve or normal version of the same wine label. However, note that this term is unregulated in the US and in France. |
| Q #10 :What is AOC? |
| A #10 : This is the abbreviation for Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée which means “protected place name”. It is France’s official category for its highest ranking types of wine whose name, origin, grape varieties and other defining factors are regulated by law. Hence, AOC wines are typically better and of course, more expensive. |
| Q #9 :What is the “New World”? |
| A #9 : This is a collective term for those winemaking countries of the world that are situated outside Europe like US, Australia, Chile, South Africa etc. “Old World” wines used to be more subdued and understated in their flavours vs the “New World” wines but there is a changing trend. |
| Q #8 :What is the sediment in the wine? |
| A #8 : Many fine wines, especially the older red wines have sediment or deposit in the bottle. This sediment is nothing more than the result of the wine’s development and hopefully, improvement. It is not only normal but desirable for fine wines. To remove, decant the wine. |
| Q #7 :What is Ice Wine? |
| A #7 : Also known as “Eiswein” in Germany, it is a sweet dessert wine made from frozen grapes with the ice discarded, making it very concentrated in flavour, acidity and sugar. Rare and hard to make (thus very pricy), it is available from Germany, Austria and Canada. |
| Q #6 :What is Botrytis Cinerea? |
| A #6 : Botrytis Cinerea also called the noble rot, is a mold that attaches itself to the grapes and shrivels and dehydrates them so that their sugar becomes concentrated. Botrytis is caused by a combination of humidity, fog and temperature that allows the mold to develop. Many sweet wines nowadays are made deliberately by this method. |
| Q #5 :What is Beaujolais Nouveau? |
| A #5 : Beaujolais Nouveau is wine released on the third Thursday of November to be drank as soon as it is released. After the grape is harvested, they are put into vats and their own weight crushed the bottom grapes and fermentation begins. It is then bottled and sold. |
| Q #4 :Do all wines improve with age? |
| A #4 : No. Most wines (more than 90%) should be consumed shortly after it is released. Only a pedigree wines of fine vintage improve with age. Red wines usually can age better than white wines. For more information, check out the “Vintage” section. |
| Q #4 :What does Doux on a Champagne label mean? | ||||||||||
A #4 : This term is used to describe the residual sugar or sweetness of Champagnes.
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| Q #3 :Is Champagne a type of wine? |
| A #3 : Yes, Champagne is made from a blend of red and white grapes and undergoes two fermentation to obtain its bubbles. After the first fermentation (similiar to wine), sugar and yeast is added to ferment again and the sugar is converted into equal parts of alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The gas is absorbed into the wine, causing bubbles. This method was discovered by a Benedictine Monk named “Dom Perignon”, a well known name now. |
| Q #2 :What is the “dome” in the base of a wine bottle called? What is the purpose? |
| A #2 : The “dome” is technically known as the “punt”. Some of the many valid reasons include, allowing sediments to collect around the punt, allowing pourer to hold the bottle from the bottom with the thumb in the punt and greater strength and stability of punted vs flat bottom. Nowadays, it is used out of tradition because a punted bottle is equated with a higher quality (same reason many wines use corks when crown caps or synthetic corks are just as practical).. |
| Q #1 :Why does the waiter in a good restaurant give you the cork of the wine to examine? |
| A #1 :Some reasons that have been going around are – it’s for you to smell it, it’s for you to make sure what they opened is what you ordered or even, for you to keep as a souvenir. The most acceptable answer is that you can make sure the cork is still in one good piece and not rotten or broken. If it is so, chances are the wine will be affected by the cork. Posts Related to Wine faqs
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