Category Archives

23 Articles

Wine Defects and Other Problems That Make Wine Taste Like Compost

Wine Faults and Bad Wine Smells

Bad Smells are Just Part of What Can Go Wrong With a Bad Wine Defect

View our previous post – How Wine is Described By Those Snooty People Who Invent Terms Like Terroir

Drinking wine can be a sublime experience when everything comes together for the perfect glass. But what about those less than perfect glasses where the wine is a little flawed or badly flawed? These defects are usually called wine faults and there are lots of different types. Ever smell a wine that reminds you of a wet dog? That’s a wine fault often caused by a tainted wine cork or some other bacteria or unwelcome “guest”. Read More→

How Wine is Described By Those Snooty People Who Invent Terms Like Terroir

How to Describe Wine?

Taste and Smell Are Critical to Describing Wine

How do you describe wine? It’s amazing how many terms people use to describe it. Taste, mouth feel, bouquet, color, palate (really a misnomer because that’s really part of your mouth) clarity, body, aroma, legs (yes legs…we’ll get into that in a bit), never mind a mind boggling array of individual smells that even a bloodhound would have a hard time distinguishing. Most are useful in describing wine to knowledgeable wine folks but some are as pointless as owning a pair sunglasses in England.  Humans have five senses. Are all of them actually useful to describe wine? Let’s take a look at each sense and see if it makes sense (no pun intended) to use it to describe wine. Read More→

Opening Wine Bottles With Damaged Corks

Removing Broken Corks from Wine Bottles

The Bane of Wine Drinkers – The Broken Cork

How do you open wine when the cork is damaged? Do you just keep churning away with the same corkscrew that caused the problem (or more likely the operator of the corkscrew who really caused the problem)? Do you resort to another tool that might work better? The answer is surprisingly simple if you apply a little common sense. Read More→

Opening Wine Bottles Without Resorting To Serious Power Tools

How do you open a bottle of wine? Assuming it’s a cork and not a screw top, there are a myriad of tools to open a bottle of wine and probably twice as many ways to screw up a cork. If it is a screw top and you are still reading expecting to find how to open the bottle, just quit reading, stop drinking wine and stick with Bud Light. Read More→

Wine Bottle Sizes – How Much Wine In A Bottle Makes For A Really Good Time? – Part 2

What Size Bottles Does Wine Come In

56 Glasses of Wine. Why Not?  This Is a Salmanazar Next to a Standard Bottle of Wine.

What are the largest wine bottles? They run the gamut from three standard bottles of wine, up to ones seemingly big enough to fill an average sized swimming pool.  By the way, if you’re looking for information on the more standard format wine bottles, please visit part one of this post, which covers single serving bottles through Magnums. Read More→

Serving Wine Part 3 – Allowing Wine to Breath Doesn’t Mean “Giving It Some Space”

Wine Carafe

A Wine Carafe Is The Best Tool To Allow Wine To Breathe

Honestly, is anything ever easy? Take wine for instance. Most articles pontificate on the benefits of allowing wine to breath but like everything else regarding wine, letting it breathe is open to debate. Read More→