With restaurant markups of 100%-200% over retail price, many diners opt to bring their own wine and pay a fee known as corkage. Corkage charges range from zero to as high as $50 per bottle in upscale restaurants. Corkage charges in moderate restaurants will run $10-15 per bottle.
Champagne is made in two styles: non-vintage house blend Champagne (which can be Brut, Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, or Rosé) and vintage Champagne from a single superior vintage. Vintage Champagne is very expensive and intended for years of cellaring.
All wines have a maturation profile. Most red wines are intended for immediate consumption. For example, Beaujolais Nouveau should be drunk within months of release. Other wines such as Red Bordeaux and Barolo or Barbaresco come to maturity after 10 to 20 years. Zinfandel wines are a little different.
Today, wines ratings are done on a 100-point scale. This wine ratings system is championed by Robert. M. Parker, the Wine Spectator, and other periodicals and wine experts. The numbers of the wine ratings roughly correspond to the academic grading system commonly used in the United States: 90-100 (A), 80-89 (B), 70-79 (C). Wine ratings lower than 70 are rarely published.
It’s all about closures and there are many different kinds.
Cork and Synthetic Cork
Traditional cork-finished bottles are supplied with a foil covering that’s punctured with two or three tiny holes that allow for micro-oxygenation in wines intended to long storage. Remove the foil, cutting around the rim of the bottle with a small knife. Drive the worm of the corkscrew all the way to the bottom of the cork and remove according to the design of the corkscrew. If you intend to re-cork the bottle, don’t drive the worm all the way through so the wine doesn’t leak through the hole you just made. Re-insert the cork upside-down.
Today’s wines are remarkably dependable. All the fuss surrounding restaurant wine service is a reflection of former days when 5-10% or more bottles were seriously flawed. But defects still exist and we need to know how to identify them. Some defects can be traced back to the winery and its methods. Others stem from mishandling of the wine after bottling. The older the wine is, the more serious these defects will be. There are only a handful of defects that you are likely to encounter:
Cooking is big business. Cookbooks and recipes abound. T.V. chefs entertain and inform us 24 hous a day.
How quickly we forget that our grandmothers probably cooked everything they made without benefit of any of these resources — and in many cases did as well, or even better than today’s harried cooks.
Nothing could be simpler or more complex than wine making. The process of wine making was discovered thousands of years ago. Fermentation, necessary for wine making, can take place naturally inside whole grapes. The product of natural fermentation is intoxicating but not especially savory. The history of wine making has been one of refinement.
Many wineries offer two or more lines of product under the same winery label. These second labels can sometimes be great buys.
There is a Guide to Wine and wine courses available at every level of interest. There are books that serve as introductory guide to wine, guide to wine producing regions, and courses of study for those really serious about learning as much as possible about every aspect of wine.
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