Wine 101

Autumn is here – time to swap over your ‘wine wardrobe’

As autumn sets in, the air gets crisper, and the nights cooler, it’s a good time to swap over your ‘wine wardrobe’. At the same time you start donning an extra layer in the evenings and trading your thongs for sneakers, it also makes sense to start replacing some of your lighter, fresher summer wines with a new selection of autumn favourites.

The Importance of Wine Scores

Wine scores have become an institution, and yes, they can serve as excellent guides when you’re trying and buying wine. However, they represent just one piece of the wine-selection puzzle. It’s important to go beyond the numbers and the medals when you’re choosing wine – to consider opinions from fellow wine consumers, the stories behind the wines, and, most important, your personal preferences. Here, we look not only at the benefits of and issues with ...

How Important is a Wine's Vintage?

The term vintage has two meanings in the wine world - the year in which grapes making a particular wine come from; and the physical process of grape harvesting and winemaking. A vintage wine thus means the grapes used to make this wine come from a particular single year. As weather varies from one year to another and is never identical, the grapes grown and wines made each year are also unique. Therefore it is hardly surprising to find same wines from diffe...

What makes a wine great?

The defining element of a great wine is its ability to provide enjoyment. After all, we drink and appreciate wine for the joy and pleasure it brings. However, we are all influenced by our personal preferences and experiences, so not surprisingly, we don’t all enjoy the same wines. The differentiation of a great wine with a good wine becomes a very subjective matter, and we often find a commonly acknowledged ‘great wine’ tastes merely ‘good’ to us, or ...

Wine and Food - A match made in Heaven

Food and wine matching have become an art and culture nowadays. However, the pairing of food and wine is not restricted to only the experts! By following a few basic rules anyone can find pleasure in playing around with various combinations of food and wine.

How to Store Your Half Bottles of Wine

We wine lovers have all encountered the situation where a bottle or two extra have been opened and cannot be finished. How to deal these wines with justice has been a great issue in the past and the debates will most likely to carry on in the future. Before we get to the details on the whys and hows of wine preservation, there is one suggestion recommended! Drink up if what you have there is something super prestigious, such as a bottle of Bordeaux First Growth...

Pairing Cheese with Wine

Wine and cheese pairing can be a bit of a love-hate relationship – the mouth-coating texture of cheese can help soften the taste of wine and make it more pleasant, but it can also mask a delicate wine’s flavour and texture. A great place to start from is to match cheese with wines from the same region! This makes sense as wine and cheese pairing is most likely to have evolved together in the region as part of its culture, therefore the combination would hav...

Terroir - From Land to the Sky

Terroir is unsurprising, a French term. It emerged from Burgundy during the region's glorious period of winemaking in the 14th Century. Simply put, it includes all the natural factors that impose direct and indirect influences on vines and grapes.

Oak Types and their Influences

The use of oak during winemaking greatly determines the style of a wine. It impacts on the colour, structure, texture and flavour of resulting wine.

Guide to Cellar Wine

As wines age, they are expected to change in texture, flavour profiles and increase in complexity. Ageing is a very unpredictable process in terms of how the wine will evolve and the time it takes to do so. Here are some tips to get you started.

Guide to En Primeur

Demand for some wines can exceed their supply, and it is possible that all of a grower’s wine is sold before it is bottled. It can then be very difficult or expensive to obtain that wine at a later stage. In addition, buying en primeur gives assurances about the provenance, as you are buying directly from the producer.

Glassware and Serving Suggestions

With a vast range of glassware out there on the market - which glass is the right fit for your wine tonight? This guide covers the best glassware for each varietal and their optimum serving temperatures.

How to Decant Wine

In simple terms, it is the transfer of wine from its bottle to another receptacle – the decanter – which most commonly consists of glass, not only because transparent containers look shiny and beautiful, but also the inert nature of glass prevents interaction with the wine. Firstly preparation. An ideal tasting location will have good lighting and minimal odour to help you taste without being influenced by other factors. Find yourself a decent glass with a ...

Wine Sensory Evaluation

So many wine personalities before us, including the late Len Evans, warned us of the importance to carefully choose every individual wine in our lives. Life is too short to put up with bad wines, and never long enough for all the great ones out there. In this case, wine tasting and appreciation become super-handy. By examining in detail each wine you taste and putting your sensations into words, the impressions become longer lasting in memory. Trying a great wi...

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Wine 101

Autumn is here – time to swap over your ‘wine wardrobe’

The Importance of Wine Scores

How Important is a Wine's Vintage?

What makes a wine great?

Wine and Food - A match made in Heaven

How to Store Your Half Bottles of Wine

Pairing Cheese with Wine

Terroir - From Land to the Sky

Oak Types and their Influences

Guide to Cellar Wine

Guide to En Primeur

Glassware and Serving Suggestions

How to Decant Wine

Wine Sensory Evaluation

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