Wine: A Few Tips on Serving

Choosing the right bottle of wine is something that is entirely up to you. Whether you are the type that likes cheap wine ("table wine") or prefers the more expensive bottles, only you can decide. Personally, I prefer table wine for most evenings and save the nicer bottles for special occasions. That's just me, though, others have very different tastes. Here are just a couple of points that are worth keeping mind:

• The types of wine you serve and what you serve it with is left to your own discretion, but avoid making the classic mistake of serving red wine with fish. People will talk.

• Today, most people serve white wines too cold and red wines too warm. The "serve red wines at room temperature" rule is a holdover from days when people lived in damp, cool, castles with damp, cool, wine cellars. Today most houses are considerably more heated than their medieval counterparts, and a bottle of room temperature wine would be decidedly too warm. Adjust for this with the 20/20 rule. Twenty minutes before serving dinner, put a bottle of red wine into the refrigerator, and take the bottle of white wine out. (I once spent a winter in Seattle living in a house with no heating. The red wines served at room temperature were delicious.)

• Some nice wines these days come with bottle caps instead of corks. This is okay. Some believe that bottle caps may improve the wine, because they eliminate the possibility of the wine being infected by the cork, or "corked."

• Use a pocket knife or the knife on the corkscrew to remove the foil from the top of the bottle. Then, use the corkscrew to remove the cork. Don't screw too deeply or you'll risk tainting the wine with cork bits. Remove the cork, using the leverage device on the corkscrew, or brute strength if you've got it. It takes about 100 pounds of direct pressure to remove a cork. Don't spill!

• Speaking of not spilling, while pouring the wine, there is always one last drop that clings to the mouth of the bottle. When you set the bottle upright, that drop will run down the bottle and stain the label and/or tablecloth. There are several ways to deal with this drip, but licking it off isn't one. The best technique is to use your elbow and wrist to rotate the bottle after pouring, causing the drop of wine to coat the entire mouth of the bottle and thus, cease to be a drop.