Buying and Serving Wine In A Day For Dummies (eBook)

Ed McCarthy, CWE, (Baldwin, NY) is a regular contributor to Wine Enthusiast and The Wine Journal. Mary Ewing-Mulligan, MW, (Baldwin, NY) is the owner and president of the International Wine Center, a New York City wine school that offers credentialed wine education for wine professionals and serious wine lovers. She's the U.S. director of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, and is also the long-standing wine columnist of the NY Daily News. Mary was the first female Master of Wine (MW) in the United States, and is one of only 31 MW's in North America (with 300 worldwide). Ed and Mary have co-authored six wine books in the For Dummies series and also share wine columns in Nation's Restaurant News and in Beverage Media, a trade publication. They are each columnists for the online wine magazine, WineReviewOnline.com. Ed and Mary are both accredited as Certified Wine Educators (CWE).

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Unlocking the Mysteries of Wine 3

Wine 101 3

What Color Is Your Appetite? 4

(Not exactly) white wine 5

Red, red wine 6

Pink wines: From rosé to "blush" 7

Which color of wine when? 7

Other Ways of Categorizing Wine 8

Table wine 8

Dessert wine 9

Sparkling wine 9

The Special Technique for Tasting Wine 10

Savoring a wine's appearance 11

The nose knows 11

The mouth action 12

Chapter 2: The Wine Label and What It Tells You 15

The Wine Name Game 15

One or the other: Naming a grape or a place 16

Hello, my name is Chardonnay: Varietal names 16

Hello, my name is Bordeaux: Place names 17

Wine Labels, Forward and Backward 17

The mandatory sentence 18

Phrases of origin 20

Some optional label lingo 20

Chapter 3: Buying Wine to Drink at Home 23

Wine Retailers, Large and Small 23

Supermarkets, superstores, and so on 24

Wine specialty shops 25

Online merchants 26

Criteria for Choosing Wine Merchants 27

In the wine shop 27

On the Internet 30

Strategies for Wine Shopping 31

Don't be afraid to experiment 31

Explain what you want 31

Name your price 32

Asking the right questions 33

Chapter 4: Knowing the Necessary Wine

Gadgets and Glasses 35

Contemplating Corkscrews 35

The corkscrew not to use 36

The corkscrew to buy 36

Other corkscrews worth owning 37

Looking at Glass Matters 38

The right color: None 39

Thin but not tiny 39

Tulips, flutes, and other picturesque wine-glass names
40

Washing your wine glasses 42

Chapter 5: Serving Wine 43

Confronting the Cork 43

Removing the cork 44

Waiter, there's cork in my wine! 45

Opening Champagne and sparkling wine 46

Welcoming the Rebirth of the Screwcap 48

Letting Your Wine Breathe 48

How to aerate your wine 49

The wines that need aerating 49

Serving Wine at the Right Temperature 51

Pouring Wine 52

Keeping Leftover Wine 53

Chapter 6: Confronting a Restaurant Wine List 55

Understanding How Wine Is Sold in Restaurants 55

Wines by the glass: House and premium wines 56

The (anything but) standard wine list 58

Discovering How to Read a Wine List 59

What the wine list should tell you 59

Tips for using the wine list 60

Digital browsing 62

Ordering Your Wine 62

Handling the Wine Presentation Ritual 63

Trying Restaurant Wine Tips 65

Chapter 7: Where to Go from Here 67

Taking Your First Steps 67

Visiting dummies.com 68