How to open and serve wine
There’s already a lot out there about technical aspects of drinking wine like opening, decanting and serving wines (links below). I would just add that a lot of these techniques really depend on your own palate, habits and the wine itself. For example, even cheaper or lighter wines sometimes need a decant to improve, but not always. Too much air can push a wine towards its decline or at least decrease its fruitiness. Most people actually like wines when they are at their fruitiest, so decanting will just make it worse for them.
On the other hand, you can have young wines that are so closed or tannic that you have to do all you can to coax it awake or soften it up like decanting it, using an aerator, swirling it constantly, or trying it the next day. Other aromas you might not like like reductive notes will also start to dissipate with more air or sometimes it’s just in an awkward stage and air pushes its evolution into a more integrated stage. In theory, you’d want a wider decanter and glass with more surface space to air out the wine better or skinnier decanter if you want less aeration. Therefore, it depends on how the wine is showing at that moment.
It also depends on how much you drink. If you do decant but don’t plan on drinking the whole bottle, then don’t decant the whole bottle. There are vacuums and seals to help preserve what’s left in a bottle longer. Even better, putting the bottle in the fridge helps slow the aging process too, but you also have to remember to take it out to let it warm up before you serve it again. An open bottle well sealed and in a fridge can last 3-5 days, but it can depend on the type of wine. Aged sweet Pedro Ximenez can last months for example.
Wines served too cold can also make a wine closed aromatically, so you can also warm up a wine for a few seconds in the microwave if it’s too cold. At the same time, a colder serving temperature can mask faults like too much alcohol, so I would just say don’t be afraid to chill reds, especially cheaper reds in the summer when the room temperature is too warm. Ice shouldn’t be taboo for simple, cheap wines either. It should be noted that white wines aren’t often decanted, but it can benefit from aeration too and should be allowed to warm up if kept in the fridge too.
As far as older bottles, they need some time upright to let the sediments settle. A really old wine should be standing up for at least a day. In addition, I would taste the wine before I decant it just in case the wine is already close to dying or already in its sweet spot. In this case, you’d mainly decant to avoid too much sediments in the wine (or use a filter to avoid decanting), but sometimes they do need to awaken from their slumber or let some stale aromas air out. Again, it’s a matter of personal preference how mature you like your wine. Do you want more fruit or do you want more tertiary complex notes? This will affect how long you age or (if you) decant a wine.
In general, I still like to err on the side of less decanting because you can always wait longer for it to improve, but if you decant it to its decline, it’s too late. That would be a shame if the wine was rare and expensive. Plus, there’s the joy of observing how a wine evolves over time, much like watching your kid grow up. Honestly, on most evenings with most wines, I just pour what I’m going to drink in the glass 30 minutes before we eat and that’s enough of a decant. If it’s closed one night, I’ll still have some for the next day to see how it evolves. It’s too much trouble to decant with a decanter every night for lower to mid-level wines.
Furthermore, I’m still experimenting on how old I like to drink my nicer wines that can age, and it’s an inexact science. Sometimes, for no rhyme or reason, a wine tastes better one day than another. It’s a complex combination of things. There’s the food pairing, decanting, possible bottle shock (a wine that has traveled a lot that needs some rest), how well the wine was stored, the serving temperature, the glass material and shape, your mood that day, the company and music you’re drinking with, and the fact that wines are evolving living things that sometimes go through dormant or awkward periods despite having potential to bloom into maturity, much like a teenager. Despite all that, you may do everything right and open 2 of the same exact bottles at the same time, and one may be better than the other.
Lastly, I should also mention that there are Coravins, which are machines that allow you to sample wines while saving the rest for the future. Depending on the model, they can keep a wine for weeks or months. If you’re a slow drinker and are very specific about your pairings, you can open multiple bottles to match your needs any given day without wasting the whole bottle.
Opening and serving a wine like a pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgzMnHYcA1E
Opening and serving sparkling wine: https://youtu.be/qrXv5bA9AP8
Wine Serving Temperature: https://winefolly.com/tips/white-red-wine-temperature/
Smelling Corks: Do or don’t do?: https://winediplomats.com/cork-to-sniff-or-not-to-sniff/
Detecting Flawed Wines: https://winefolly.com/tips/wine-faults/
Detecting and Returning Corked Bottles: https://winediplomats.com/wine-review-2017-2018-emiliana-coyam-colchagua-exchanging-corked-wines/
Recognizing Corked Wines and Returning Them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL4xkTwvwRI
Saving Corked wines with Saran Wrap?: https://www.vinum55.com/corkedwineandplasticwrap/
Opening older bottes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpZW012Gvas
Decanting wines: https://winefolly.com/episode/decanting-wine/; https://winefolly.com/episode/when-to-decant-wine/
Decanting older wines: https://youtu.be/t4ITz1aALt8
Why decanting is overrated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY16pVrbnww
Are aerators worth it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co1NyKhUCks
Vacuum-sealing wines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWMhDNwAfw
Transferring wines to smaller containers to keep them longer: https://www.winespectator.com/video/play/id/UJjrZ89e/title/Wine+101%3A+How+to+Save+Leftover+Wine
The RePour wine saver is a cheap one time use stopper that claims to be able to preserve wine for up to 4 weeks. https://youtu.be/afBYMsI0nVw
Everwine is a new product claiming to preserve a bottle up to 6 months: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JtvJtQ9WPY
Using Coravins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecUQRQweEJ4
Comparing Coravin models: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ARPbZMwgc
Choosing wine glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJATtt0p8o8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILSSvwlOlYk
Priming or Seasoning Wine Glasses (to get rid of odors from detergent or where glasses are stored): https://www.winespectator.com/articles/what-is-wineglass-priming-or-seasoning-57388
Cleaning Wine Glasses: https://www.winemag.com/2021/04/13/how-to-clean-wine-glasses/
Tasting and evaluating wines
Likewise, there’s a ton of resources on this (links below). I would just add that not enough people smell their wines and that’s half the pleasure. It may look pretentious, but it’s worth it. All these techniques above and below are just ways to help you enjoy wine even if you don’t plan on learning anything else about wine and just like drinking it. You might as well maximize the wine’s potential.
However, if you do want to get more serious about wine, then I suggest you take notes and reflect on the wine. Like with learning anything, you experiment and reflect. Compare and contrast. Experiment and reflect again. This especially means experimenting with different producers, varieties, regions, vintages, and ages of wine. This also means experimenting with how much you decant and what you pair the wine with.
You can also do some research along the way. This way you learn some of the professional vocabulary and can compare your notes with critics’ reviews. Maybe this helps you understand more what you’re tasting and gives you the words to express that although you don’t always have to agree with critics and you should use tasting references that are relevant to you. For example, there’s no point in saying a wine tastes like truffles because a critic says that if you’ve never had truffles. Moreover, maybe your brain’s reference for strawberry growing up in Canada tastes different than someone’s idea of a strawberry in Mexico. Like wine grapes, other fruits have different terroir, and cultures have different preferences of how to produce and use those fruits. Maybe you like riper strawberries. Maybe you think of strawberry Twizzlers as your reference for strawberries. This means that one person’s tasting reference may mean something different for you.
Therefore, it’s OK if your notes aren’t the same as the critic’s. However, as you get better, you start seeing your notes matching what professionals are saying at least on a general level. Therefore, a lot of my notes often just say dark berry fruit or red berry fruit because there’s a wide range of red berry fruit references in people’s minds. I can generally say if a wine is full or light, high acid or not, earthy or not without necessarily having to be some wine tasting savant with super precise descriptions. Even the greatest experts in the world can be fooled and get it wrong sometimes, so don’t feel any pressure in just trying to describe and categorize what you experience. So much of wine tasting is psychological and subjective. Enough acid for me might be too sour for you. It’s subjective. Plus there are genetic physiological differences that cause us to sense things differently.
However, knowing more about the wine helps you enjoy it more, just like watching a movie you love and getting the director’s notes, listening to a song you love after having learned about what inspired the writer’s lyrics, or visiting the Sistine Chapel and learning some facts about it. Similarly, focusing and reflecting on a wine’s qualities and greatness help us appreciate it like when we debate about our favorite sports team, film or song with friends.
Basics to tasting wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHgxJWlcyw
Taking Notes on your wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ43kJATr1M
Wine Flavor Chart: https://winefolly.com/tips/wine-aroma-wheel-100-flavors/
Here are some wine glossaries to help with terminology:
A lot of people also use the vivino app to easily log, rate and comment on wines you drink: https://www.vivino.com/app
Evaluating Wines
As far as evaluating wines, the teacher side of me likes to give an overall grade to help me remember how good of wine it was in case I look back at my notes and consider re-buying this wine, variety, vintage or producer again. It can also help you know if a wine you have several bottles of is improving. It helps you create benchmarks to help you learn about differences between wines and be a savvy wine shopper.
We’re using a 100 point scale because that is the most universal. Americans will understand it because that’s how American school grades are done unlike Chilean school grades which are done in a strange 7 point scale. Here’s an overview of what the overall scores mean and how some of the points are allocated according to Wine Advocate critic Erin Larkin. Unfortunately, the critics don’t have the exact same criteria or the same point allocations for the criteria. Most will definitely include color/appearance, nose/aromas, and some type of evaluation of the palate which can include structure, length/finish, flavor, etc.
However, if you’re reading our tasting notes or some other critic’s tasting notes, the tasting notes are more important than the score. From a personal learning standpoint, those details in a critic’s notes or your own notes are important for your learning about the style, producer, variety, region, etc.
In addition, only following scores can lead to disappointment. For instance, one critic might give more points to reflect the greatness of wine in that style, but you don’t like that style. Parker added up to 10 points for age-ability, but if you drunk this wine too early and didn’t see his recommended drinking window, you’d be greatly disappointed. Others might consider quality/price ratio in their score, but everyone’s budget is different. Basically, scores can be inflated by criteria that are less important for you. Not to mention, critics score their wines without food and often next to dozens of other wines at a time which can cause tongue fatigue and lead them to overrate bigger bolder wines that stick out. Therefore if I’m looking for a wine to drink now and I prefer more subtle, elegant wines, then a highly scored wine in a big and bold style still may end up being disappointing for me or vice versa. That’s why tasting notes are more important than scores.
Some critics and wine pros try to be objective with their scores, but you have to read the notes. One thing they sometimes say is that they personally would enjoy a lower scored wine more than a wine they scored higher. I get what they are saying and appreciate that they acknowledge their biases. Some wines technically may better or some styles might be more popular for the average consumer which they try to reflect in their rating and review, but each critic and consumer ultimately has their own personal preferences. For example, there are some musicians that I can say are technically great, but they’re not necessarily what I want to listen to everyday. It’s the same with wine. Other critics just embrace their own preferences and cater to subscribers who have those same preferences.
Therefore, if you’re going to follow a critic, you should make sure you share a similar palate and find their comments useful. Each one has their own sensibility, preferences and ways they describe the wine. Although they are limited, ratings and reviews do help me make decisions purchasing wines. Although I take all ratings with a grain of salt, it’s hard for me to resist a well priced wine that has many positive reviews/scores from critics and amateurs on Vivino or Cellartracker. Plus, I personally like diversity in wines, so I appreciate a variety of styles even if it’s a wine that may be overrated by a critic who likes certain types of wines. However, I read the notes to make sure I know what to expect for pairing purposes.
Bottom line, you need to trust your own palate and continue to drink what you enjoy, not necessarily what any critic says. Nevertheless, if you never explore and reflect on your wine every once in while, you may be missing some really great stuff out there. Such is life, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. For example, I never thought I’d live in Virginia, marry a French woman, live in Yemen, love sushi, or do many other amazing things in my life had I not explored. I once thought Italian wines were way to acidic for me, but now I usually can’t enough acid in my wines. I used to be exclusively a red wine drinker, but now I’m exploring more whites. Trust your own palate, but explore endlessly. Also, revisit wines you didn’t like in the past because first impressions are often wrong.
Critics
Many wine dealer websites publish professional tasting notes in their wine descriptions and you also have cellartracker.com or vivino to read other amateur reviews for free. However, if you’re willing to pay and subscribe to access all their reviews, below are some links to the biggest critics out there. They all review Chilean wines among others.
American critic, James Suckling, seems to be the most enthusiastic critic of Chilean wines and hence his scores seem a little too high at times. Another reason is his scoring rubric has 35 pts for overall impression which is rather vague for that many points. However, British critic, Tim Atkins, also really seems to love Chilean wines. British critics speak more to their British audience who like more classic wines. This speaks to Chilean wines’ ability to please both modern and classic wine lovers. The Wine Enthusiast critic of Chilean wines doesn’t seem to like Chilean wines and his scores and comments typically reflect that, but they review a lot of Chilean wines. The critic that matches my palate and my scores the most is the Wine Advocate’s Luis Gutierrez, who specializes in Spanish and South American wines. He likes more acidic and terroir driven wines as a whole and doesn’t overinflate scores for over-extracted and oaky wines. He also writes extensive notes. There are several other critics from different countries and in different languages. I won’t list them all. I’m mainly trying to give you ones that regularly do reviews on Chilean wines in English. There’s also the Latin American Wine Guide which gives ratings by MW Alistair Cooper.
Descorchados is the biggest Spanish language wine review of Chilean and other South American wines, but the store and wine organization CAV also has tasting notes in Spanish for many of the wines they sell on their website and they also publish a book of tasting notes every year. Guia Vinau focuses on scoring independent Chilean wines.
Finally, I should mention that more and more people are criticizing critics for inflating scores and catering to the wine producers and sellers more than the consumers. The Wine Advocate became big because it focused on the latter. However, the power of scores to affect sales and prices has increased the former. In addition, inflating scores also means producers and wine dealers are more likely to mention a critic’s scores on their bottles and websites, which gives that critic more publicity. Since so many reviews and scores can be found for free on dealer websites, it makes sense that critics try to make money from the dealers and producers more than the consumer subscriptions these days. There are also so many more critics out there sharing the market of consumers when there only used to be a couple in the US and the UK. Plus, there are so many blogs, Instagrammers and YouTubers reviewing wines. It’s great for wine geeks to learn more and those selling wines to get so much publicity, but perhaps it’s too much for an average consumer to filter through. If that’s the case, pick one critic you like and/or find a local dealer you trust to get good recommendations.
James Suckling: https://www.jamessuckling.com/
Tim Atkins: https://timatkin.com/
Wine Advocate: https://www.robertparker.com/
Wine Enthusiast: https://www.winemag.com/
Vinous: https://vinous.com/
Decanter: https://www.decanter.com/
Jancis Robinson: https://www.jancisrobinson.com/
Wine Spectator: https://www.winespectator.com/
Descorchados: https://www.guiadescorchados.cl/
CAV: https://cav.cl/
Guia Vinau: https://guiavinau.cl/
Latin American Wine Guide: https://latinamericanwineguide.com/