Choosing a good wine can be a nightmare, especially when you’ve got someone to impress. You’re having a dinner party – you’ve planned the menu thoroughly, dusted off your best crockery and wine glasses, and got everything prepared – except for the wine selection. There’s just too much to think about, and everyone else always seems to know so much more than you do about it. You stand there for ages looking at the endless shelves of different bottles, and the more you wonder about it the harder it gets. That’s why we’ve put together a few tips of what to look for and how to choose the perfect wine.
Firstly and most importantly, you should match the wine to the meal you have chosen. Everyone has different opinions of which wines will taste good with different foods, but there are a few basic rules that you can follow if you’re not sure. The easiest way is to match the colour of the wine to the meat, you can't go wrong. So if you’re eating red meat go for a dark red like Cabernet or Syrah. For lamb or pork a medium bodied red like a Merlot will be less heavy whilst still supplying a rich flavour. Chicken and fish dishes are often overpowered by reds so it’s best to go for a white instead, like a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. If it’s a special occasion or celebration, you might be better off with a sparkling wine, served in fancy Champagne flutes.
Once you’ve worked out what kind of wine you are looking for, check where it was made. Wines from different regions will be hugely different in quality, so it pays to do a bit of research into which are the best regions. If you’re not sure, France is always a good bet and has been producing good quality wines for hundreds of years. Italy is another one, and Chilean wines are also very popular at the moment, particularly reds.
Another thing it’s worth checking is the vintage of the wine, or the year it was bottled. A true wine buff will already know which were the good years for each region, and will only buy vintages they know came from a particularly good crop. For the rest of us non-experts, it can seem like a lot of guesswork, but if you know a few of the basics you’ll at least be on the right track. A common misconception is that the older a wine is, the better it will taste. It’s true that most red wines do improve with a little aging, but most wineries don’t distribute these reds for a couple of years after bottling, which gives them time to mature. This means by the time they appear in stores they are ready to drink and will taste good. Most white or sparkling wines don’t need aging, and taste good if drunk straight away.
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Guest Author | 
04 30th, 2009| 
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