Wine Basics – A Beginner’s Guide to Drinking Wine
Beginner’s Guide to Wine
First things first, learn how to handle and open wine bottles safely and confidently. Don’t get locked up on the spot. Also, discover the preferred tools that wine pros use everyday.
Handling Wine
Basic Wine Tools Wine Folly Shop
Wine 101: Drinking & Buying Wine
Drinking Wine
- How to Taste Wine
- How to Start Training Your Palate
- How to Decant Wine
- How to Check for Bad Wine
- How to Spit Wine
- Basic Wine and Food Pairing
- Basic Wine Characteristics
- Red & Dark Fruit Flavors in Wine
- Understanding Red Wine Colors
- Understanding White Wine Colors
- So You Want to be a Wine Expert
Buying Wine
Why Learn About Wine?
Enhances Social Experiences
At its heart wine is a beverage best enjoyed in the company of others. A little bit of wine knowledge goes a long way by opening doors to new flavors and styles. Exploring wine is an inexhaustible adventure for which you’ll need to enlist your friends and family.
Confidence Buying Wine
No one likes to go to the wine aisle and feel overwhelmed. Have you bought wine based on arbitrary ratings, ambiguous tasting notes, or the label? How would you like to walk in, confidently find your favorite wines, and leave 100% satisfied?
Improve Ability to Taste/Smell
Tasting/smelling wine doesn’t have to be an exercise in snobbery. It only takes a brief pause to develop an awareness of what you’re drinking. Knowing what you like will make it much easier to consistently find similar wines. This isn’t limited to wine, learning a few basics can improve the taste/smell of just about anything.
Personal Challenge/Satisfaction
The wine world is immense. We like to see this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. Do you have a favorite sports team, fashion designer, tv chef, or movie director? What if I told you that there are celebrity winemakers and that if you found your favorite winery/winemaker you’d never have to drink bad wine again?
Glossary of Wine Terms
- Chaptalization
- Sugar is added to grapes before they are fermented into wine. Chaptalization increases the ABV not sweetness level.
- Field Blend
- A field blend is where different grape varieties are picked together in the field and thus fermented together in winemaking. Very rare in US wineries, but common in historic regions with indigenous grape varieties such as The Douro in Portugal.
- Fûts de chêne
- The French phrase “Élevé en fûts de chêne” means wine has been aged in oak barrels. More commonly found on Champagne labels to indicate the style.
- Icon Wines
- A term to describe the most famous and expensive collector wines in the world. For example, Chateau Latour.
- Off Dry
- A wine description characterizing a wine with residual sugar (aka RS). Typically this term is used to describe wine with ‘just a hint’ of sweetness.
- Residual Sugar (RS)
- A technical wine term indicating unfermented grape sugar left to sweeten a wine.
- Single Varietal Wines
- A wine that is made from a single type of wine grape (ie pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon).
- Sweet Tannin Finish
- The lingering flavor in a red wine that leaves hints of sweet tobacco leaves or cedar in your mouth. It is a trait often found in high rated 90+ wines.
- tête de cuvée
- Aka “prestige cuvée” Top wines produced by a Champagne house or grower, made from the very best grapes, vintages and usually aged longer than regular Champagne cuvées.