From bottle to glass

Avoiding last-minute glitchesSo you've chosen a wine, possibly on the advice of a sommelier, the chef or the host, in the hope that if it's to accompany a meal the style of wine will be a good match for the food or, at least, won't fight with it. Cork's out of the bottle (a chapter in itself), and now you want to serve it or have it served to you. Service etiquette aside, the following should be borne in mind:

aeration . . . Allowing a wine to "breathe", by exposing it to air after opening the bottle, is a mild form of oxidation. Simply taking the cork out and leaving the bottle open for an hour or two before dinner is not enough. The process can be accelerated by means of swirling the wine in the glass, but most effective is to pour the wine from its bottle into a decanter (see "decanting" below). This procedure can help to soften tannic youngsters but is unlikely to benefit older wines - bottles of very old wine are best opened just a few minutes before serving, lest they start going downhill before they can be enjoyed.

bottle stink . . . As mentioned earlier, the off-putting nose sometimes evident on opening a bottle of wine can disappear after the wine has been allowed to breathe for a few minutes. Generally not a problem, unless you want to drink the wine immediately!

decanting . . . The process of slowly pouring wine from its bottle into another container, such as a glass jug, or a decanter specially designed for the job, is a means to either aerate wine or remove any sediment that might be in the bottle. Decanters used to aerate wine are most effective if designed so that wine poured into it spreads and runs down the walls of the container and settles in a wide base, facilitating as much air contact as possible.

glasses . . . Wine glasses should be well cleaned and properly rinsed with fresh, soap-free water (first hot then cold), then dried with a clean, odourless cloth that hasn't been used on the crockery or cutlery beforehand. Also, the glasses shouldn't be stored upside down on any surface or stacked in a cupboard that smells of anything.

temperature . . . As a rough guide, allowing for chilled wine warming up after serving and given a room temperature of between16º and 18º C, red wines (including Port) should be served at room temperature, with all other wines chilled to 10º C. Ideally, though, the following serving/pouring temperatures should apply:

• Sweet Sparkling Wine : 5-8º C
• Dry Sparkling Wine : 8-10º C
• Unwooded White, Sweet White and Rosé : 8-14º C
• Wooded White Wine : 13-16º C
• Light Red and Nouveau Wines : 10-14º C
• Full-bodied Red Wine : 16-18º C
• Dessert Wine and White Port : 8-10º C
• Dry Sherry : 5-8º C
• Medium and Full Cream Sherry : 8-10º C
• Red Port : 16-18º C

young before old . . . If drinking several different wines at one sitting, there's merit in not following a full-bodied blockbuster with a delicate aromatic. Personal preference is a factor, and some folks prefer to start with the finest wine of the day and finish with the least demanding, but, if you want to enjoy each to the full, serve them in the following sequence: dry before sweet, white before red, light before full-bodied, young before old, red before dessert.