Dinner with wine do you feel out of place?

17/10/2021 19:52

Dinner with wine do you feel out of place?

Basic Wine Knowledge for Diners

• Basic wine knowledge is very important to all wine drinkers, diners and habitual in socializing event. In my almost two decades in the bar and fine dining restaurant, I always noticed that 65% of the guests/ customers are not familiar with the wine served in the dining room and they just know wines called red wine and white wine. For the short explanation of wine sommelier they just accept what are wines suggestion and pretending they know what are wines recommendation. "Pretending" is a common attitude needed when necessary, to protect ignorance or zero wine knowledge. Ordering wine in a fine dining restaurant or 5 star hotels can be an intimidating and embarrasing moment if you don't have any idea about wines.

Here, I made this article to help people to understand a bit about table wines. 

Note No. 1

Before ask for your wine goes to your food you need to know what kind of wine need to order, always remember heavy foods - full bodied wines and light foods - light bodied wines. The original old tradition of wine goes to foods or food pairings is red meat - red wine and white meat - white wine, the tradition of food pairings still can apply, but not necessary. because, today any kind of wine can goes to any kind of foods. You can base your food pairings by wine body such as:

• a) Full-bodied- dry > white or red wine >>> heavy foods
• b) Medium-bodied - medium dry > white or red wine >>> medium to heavy foods
• c) Light bodied - light dry > white or red wine). >>> light foods

Note No. 2

The basic need to know by diners

A) When ordering white wine you can directly ask the sommelier for the most popular white wine grapes varieties as follows:

• 1) Chardonnay - dry wine
• 2) Sauvignon blanc - dry
• 3) Riesling - crisp, fruity, flowery
• 4) Pinot gris/Pinot grigio - medium-full bodied

B) When ordering red wine you can directly ask the sommelier for the most popular red wine grapes verieties as follows:

• 1) Cabernet sauvignon - full bodied
• 2) Merlot - medium bodied
• 3) Pinot noir - full bodied
• 4) Syrah or Shiraz - full bodied
• 5) Zinfandel - light to medium bodied
• 6) Tempranillo - light bodied

Note No. 3

Before, we go so far, I like to explain that today, we have traditional wines and new world wines, the most popular traditional wines are France, Italy, Spain and other European country. but, the best wines are from France and Italy.

Example:

• 1) Almost wine producing region from France and Italy are controlled by the goverment, and always mark with appellation controlee, once you seen the appellation controlee mark in the bottle means this is a quality wine. when ordering wine always check the appellation controlee mark, then you know what is a good wine.
• 2) New world wines are from any part in the world, but the best and popular new world wines are from USA, Australia, Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Chile and other part of European country.

I Hope you will find this information helpful