December 15, 2004
Gift ideas for the geek, wine drinker, and Somewhat Hip Restaurateur.Wine coasters, decanters, ice buckets, appropriate stemware, and cork screws
It’s kind of a neat ritual-just like the ritual of making a martini (as any good bartender knows). Slowly decant the bottle into a carafe over a candle. This method allows the server the opportunity to cut off the sediment so it doesn’t go into the decanter.
- Protect the table surface. A wine coaster or fun napkins that say something profound like “Too Many Wines Spoil the Cook,” or “Wine Improves with Age-The Older I Get, the Better I Like It” make great gifts for the wine drinker. Nice decorative ceramic tile pieces work well too. Culinary stores like Williams-Sonoma, the Pottery Barn, or hardware stores with good kitchen departments like Valley Hardware in Solvang are places to check out.
- Good decanters serve several purposes. Older vintage wines, and ports oftentimes throw sediment. Although the sediment is not harmful if consumed, its presence in the glass is uncomely- not an aesthetic to be desired.
The other important purpose of a decanter is to aerate the wine. Bouquet and aroma need interaction between the wine and oxygen. Young wines can be especially tight and need to “breathe.” Breathing is giving the wine a heavy hit of oxygen, and the best way to do it is to pour the wine slowly down the side of a decanter.
A wide mouth decanter works well as a dump bucket, a serious gadget for the serious taster. The value of maintaining sobriety is all too important in this day and age. Getting “sideways” is not the goal at any serious (or not-so-serious) wine tasting.
At any critical tasting or wine judging, all of the glasses should be the same. Every size and shape makes the wine taste different. Thus, the glass becomes a variable.
- Chill the white wine, especially the champagne. Ice buckets work the best. They will get the bottle cold quickly. HINT: Put water in with the ice. The ice chills the water, which much more effectively covers the bottle surface than simply trying to cram or shove the bottle down into the ice!
- Stemware should always be tulip shaped. Sixteen to 20 ounce glasses are ideal because they give enough headspace to let the drinker swirl the wine-something wine drinkers often do. Shape is important because the congeners, esters and other complex organic compounds in the wine interact with the oxygen, causing the wine to “breathe” or “open up.” The glass shape focuses this interaction. SERVING HINT: Never pour more than several ounces into these large glasses. Too much wine impedes the drinker’s swirling ability.
Several restaurants that use terrific stemware are Grappolo in Santa Ynez and American Flatbread on Los Alamos.
The second requirement is the surface of the screw, and Teflon is the best.
- Most corkscrews aren’t worth a damn. Two things are required for a corkscrew to be good. First, the screw needs to be a “hollow worm,” not an auger that is really like a drill. For old corks that may be dry and brittle, the screw has to be able to grab the cork, not drill through it, leaving a pile of cork residue.
One brand fits the bill the best-Screwpull.
Sideways
Don Imus of “Imus in the Morning” fame is right. He goes ballistic at those self-styled reviewers who blow any sense of so-called credibility making wrong statements in their reviews, in his case, radio and TV reviews. Wine writers can make asses of themselves too. Hopefully I do not fall in to that category!
Then there’s movie reviewers!
I was just sent a three column review of the movie “Sideways,” printed in “The Triangle’s Weekly” from the “Independent,” a newspaper in North Carolina.
In the lead paragraph of a review of “Sideways,” reviewer David Fellerath writes “...they drink as they drive through their purposefully chosen vacation destination of California’s Napa Valley.” H-e-l-l-o!
This patently incorrect geographical reference made it really very easy for me. I didn’t have to waste my time muddling through his verbal drudgery and tedium past the first paragraph!
As a longtime listener of Imus in the Morning, I have great sympathy for Don, and it comes home perfectly loud and clear when I see a review by some self-styled film reviewer who turns out to be a flaming ignoramus. “Sideways,” after all, is a movie made here. It’s a movie about our wine country- the Santa Barbara County wine country.
Media types, reviewers, and writers-usually the lowbrow type-from other regions of the U.S. should get a life, get over their provincialism, and learn the geography of other places. (If you are going to write about California at least do enough homework to make your reader think you know what you are talking about.) Reviewers shouldn’t make assumptions.
At a press conference I attended here in Santa Maria back in the 80s, I’ll never forget what Michael Moone, then head honcho of Wine World Estates, the Nestle subsidiary that owned Beringer, Meridian and other large-scale brands, said. He argued that wineries should use the appellation “Santa Barbara County” on their labels rather than the appellation, “Central Coast.” He claimed that people in Chicago would think Central Coast meant Fresno, apparently just like film reviewers on the other coast who still think a movie about wine in California means Napa Valley!
- “Sideways,” nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, is showing at the Parks Plaza Theatre in Buellton and the Palm Theatre in San Luis Obispo. -----
Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
