Trucs et astuces
Secrets
How to match the wine with meal?
Fundamental rules to be respected
- Never serve a very strong tasting wine with a delicate entree, or the other way around.
- Red wines agree rather with meats, while the whites with fishes and shellfishes.
- Sweet wines do not have to accompany oysters, avoid red wines with the sweet meals.
- Generally, the regional agreements are often excellent.
- Generally, the regional agreements are often excellent.
- Avoid, if possible, the sparkling wines with desserts, because it annihilated their delicacy. A fortified wine as Passum de Magon is more recommended.
- The vinaigrette preparations “kill" a vintage wine!
Exemple d’accords
Vin rouge tannique
Agneau, bœuf grillé ou rôti, canard, gibier, civet
Vin rouge léger
Charcuterie, grillades
Vin blanc sec
Fruits de mer, crustacés, poissons grillés ou en sauce, escargots, viandes blanches
Vin blanc de liqueur
Poissons en sauce, fromages, dessert
Mousseux
Crustacés, poissons en sauce
The wines service order is dictated by an unchanging rule. Therefore, the service of wines follows the following principles:
- The youngest before the oldest
- The lightest before the most enriched
- Dry wines before sweet ones
- Serve the aperitif wines slightly fresher.
- The ice bucket is privileged, even for red.
- Do not exceed 18 °
Tasting temperature and wine style :
- Red Vintage wines: 17-18 °
- Red Vintage wines: 15-16 °
- Dry white Vintage wines: 13-14 °
- Light, fruity and young Red wines: 13-14 °
- Rosé wines and primeur wines: 10-12 °
- Dry White wines: 10-12 °
- Sparkling wine: 7-8 °
- Vintage Sparkling wine: 10 °
- Sweet wines: 7-8 °
When the bottle is about to be opened it has to be at the appropriate temperature. The capsule covering the cork must be cut in the middle of the ring or under this one. The presence of a little mould on the top of the cork indicates simply that the wine was stored in a wet cellar. For the old vintage wines, caution and slowness are the keys of the success.
A classic corkscrew (knife-wine steward) is privileged. It will allow you to obtain a big precision. Attention not to cross the cork which risks to be weakened during its extraction. For champagnes, hold the cork of a firm hand and turn slowly the bottle with the other one (and not the opposite).
- A glass must never be filled with more than the third of its volume. Ideally with 30cl.
- Naturally, the glass must be held by its foot and not by its cup, in order to avoid the warming of the wine.
- No matter the type of wine, glasses as well as decanters have to be of an irreproachable cleanliness.
The tasting is an at once a simple and a complex action. Thanks to it, the wine is elaborated, and the oenologists approach the wine, its nature, its origin and its possible evolution.
The shape of the glass must be adapted to the type of wine, so that a correct appreciation can be made at the gustative and olfactive level.
The dress
- Color: the color, its intensity and its tone evolve always during aging. So for example, the evolution of a red wine colour will be the following: purplish blue, red, orange-yellow
- A well made wine must be brilliant and limpid
- The disk: it can be seen in white wines by maintaining the glass upright and for red wines by tilting the glass. Its thickness shows the potential of wine aging. The more it is thick, the longer would be the aging. It is the indicator of the acidity of the wine.
- The tears: they are an indication of the alcohol and the glycerin present in the wine. It is the drops that go down along the walls of the glass when the wine is moved.
The nose
A wine can develop until 700 good or bad aromas. The olfactive function represents 70 % of the information supplied by the tasting.
- The 1st nose: it is necessary to discover it, bend towards the glass put on the table to reveal the intensity and the general character of the wine.
- The 2nd nose: turn the glass then carry the glass close to the nose. The aromas are distributed in four groups: vegetal, mineral, animal and empyreumatic.
The mouth
- The attack: the first two or three seconds in mouth. it can be round, soft, lively...
- The middle: the flavours develop in the tongue. The tactile effects (astringency, viscosity and tannin) as well as the alcoholic thermal effect show themselves at this level of the tasting.
- The finale: it is about the obstinacy of the aromas in the mouth.
Craftiness to consume well
To inform it is to prevent
All the amateurs of vintage wines know it: the best of the preventions still, by far, the information. Far from us, thus, the idea to play killjoy! But some basic notions are always good to take, to spread through the young generations which play sometimes dangerously with the fire.
First of all, we are not all equal in front of the alcohol: this last one spreads in the aqueous part of the body, that is, besides six liters of blood, in the most irrigated organs (liver, muscles, brain). Generally speaking, the more the weight of the body is important, the more the quantity of water is it also, and less the alcohol level will be important.
good to know
- To stay in the register of the pure tasting, a bottle of 75 cl of wine at 13° (approximately 100 g of alcohol) has to fill ten glasses (1 glass = 10 g)
- Know how to say “no” as long as your glass is not empty, to be able to count the number of times when you will fill him it.
- Sponge-effect: the solid food (bread, starchy foods) consumed in the beginning of meal will reduce the speed of absorption of the alcohol (between 0,10 and 0,15 g/l per hour)
- Some water! The water consumption before the meal and between every mouthful of wine seems to facilitate the smoothing of the peak of alcohol level. This practice will avoid you the headache of the next day!
- You drive? The best judge of your alcohol level still the alcoholmeter. Simpler still: leave the steering wheel to the one who does not drink...