Free Wine Class: How To Choose The Correct Wine Glass

Today I'd like to offer you some quality advice on the best way to choose wine glasses. It may not sound like that big of a deal but will come in handy the next time you are hosting a dinner or a cocktail party. Just imagine for a second that you are just about ready to serve your wine; but just before you set the table, fear starts to set in. Just what glasses should you put on the table? There is a method to the madness of different wine glass shapes. Let me tell you step by step which wine is preferred to go in which glass so you’ll have no fear whatsoever the next time you set your table for a great dinner with a food and wine pairing.

White Wines:
Now if you’re looking for white wines, you need a glass with a little bit more narrow opening. So this is a traditional wine glass. This would be good for white wines and red wines but it will be good for white wines in that the narrower the opening, the better because white wines don’t need as much aeration as red wine does but they have more delicate flavour. You can definitely smell a red wine from six inches away; you know the smells are coming out of that wine. I can smell these red wines now and I haven’t even put my nose in the glass. But white wines, particularly the lighter ones, you are getting into a sense of apricots, and lemons, light-citrus. You want to get every single piece of that flavour from the wine into your nose so when you’re drinking it, you’ll look for a narrower opening so when you smell it, all those aromas are trapped inside the glass by the narrow opening and they are not allowed to dissipate into the surrounding table area as they would be if there was a wide opening.

Red Wines:

Let’s just stop and think for a second. Take red wines for example. Typically Red wines are bigger, they have more tannins, they open up slower and sometimes they have to age for years in the bottle before they resemble anything remotely drinkable. They also have big flavours, they need a lot of air put in to them, (usually achieved by swirling), they need to be decanted, and finally; they usually require a lot more air than your typical white wine. Red wines need a big surface area so more air gets to them and they need a big bowl like this so when you swirl them, more wine can get contact with air. So if you’re serving a red wine, look for a glass that has a big bottom on it. This glass is also another good glass for good red wine but it does have not so much a big bottom as this traditional glass, but it does have a lot of volume in the glass so you can definitely aerate the wine better.

Sparkling wines:
In the first part of the last century; people liked their sparkling wines were sweeter than anything by today's standards. So there a wasn't a need to seek out soft, delicate flavours that would be in a small opening to a wine glass. So if you’re looking for sparkling wines, there are two kinds. There is dry which would go in a tall champagne slue and a sweeter sparkling wine can go either in a champagne slue or it can go in one of those bowl sized traditional champagne glasses.

So now that we have gone through the set of wine glasses and what wines they would traditionally be served in each glass, let’s ask ourselves some questions to kind of test what we know.

Would you consider owning more than one type of wine glass?

This would be your typical entry level wine glass that will be good for all wines. Are you going to consider owning certain types of different wine glasses based on the types of wine you would want to serve and which types of wine glasses do you think should be in your kitchen?

Would you invest in a top of the line Riedel glass or would you invest in maybe more glasses for the same price in different shapes at a lower price point?

And last, would you buy the more expensive glasses or instead would you want to invest in stronger, more economical glasses?

To find out more about red or white wine, or to just dive in an order a case; please visit us at www.bordeaux-undiscovered.co.uk

Image credit: Martin Cathrae

Health Benefits Of Red Wine

It is now common knowledge that drinking a little bit of wine can improve the health of an individual, but before you go drinking a bunch of wine, it's vital to understand just exactly what those benefits are so you can actually experience those benefits. If you take for example the differences between red and white wine, the whites are not going to give the same sorts of health benefits that you will get out of red wine, which is the one that is truly beneficial. I'm not saying here that whites are completely bad for you by any stretch, but when individuals talk about benefiting from drinking wine, they're talking about the benefits that they gain from the reds.

The Benefits
There are an abundant amount of benefits to consuming red wine in moderation, including the fact that studies have shown that it can actually help to prevent heart disease. These studies have gone on to show that if a woman drinks one glass of wine a day, and for men, two glasses per day, they can actually lower their chance of having a heart attack by as much as 30 to 50% when they are in the midst of their life. That is truly quite an amazing figure for the individuals that are in that age group.

Some additional benefits to drinking red wine in moderation include its uncanny ability to lower an individuals LDL-cholesterol, which is the bad variety of cholesterol that has a tendency to build up in older folks, and that is absolutely proven to be true. So this particular benefit of drinking red wine is going to work in your favor by reducing the risk of having any type of blood clot development in your veins as a result of fatty deposits that may have built up.

It really can't be emphasized enough that an individual is only going to gain these benefits when they consume the red wine in moderation. It's important that you always exercise caution with such things because they can be habit-forming and lead you to overindulgence which is never a good thing. Just because a little bit of something is good for you doesn't mean that drinking a bunch of it is going to increase those benefits. For example, if you drink too much the red wine you'll have a higher chance of developing other types of health issues such as high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, and a higher build up of cholesterol.

Benefits of Consuming Red Wine
Red wine happens to be a very good supplier of antioxidants which are an essential component of a person's diet who wishes to maintain a healthy and clean system. All of these antioxidants will work within your bloodstream to prevent plaque formation, or blood clots which have a tendency to build up on the walls of your circulatory system. These antioxidants help to decrease your chance of experiencing a heart attack or stroke. Another healthy substance that red wine contains which is known to raise the levels of your HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) is resveratrol.

All of the research and studies that have been done on the benefits of drinking wine have shown that it can be quite healthy when consumed in moderation, but it also needs to be noted that in order to experience the most benefits, an individual needs to embark on healthy lifestyle as well. Drinking red wine isn't going to be a cure-all for all of your ailments by any stretch of the imagination, and the best benefits from drinking red wine are always going to be achieved from an individual who combines it with an active and healthy style of living.
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