There seems to be a lot of rules about enjoying wine, but did you know that some of those are actually myths and you may not be enjoying the nuances of a wine's full flavor?
That's why Hailey Bohlman, founder of Cork & Fizz, a wine-tasting company that offers classes and tasting events, joined New Day NW to help us pour out four wine myths that even the most sophisticated wine snobs might think are true.
Follow Cork & Fizz on Facebook to learn more about wine.
Four Wine Myths:
1. "You should enjoy white wine straight out of the fridge and red wine at room temperature."
Actually, both of those would be much better if enjoyed right in between those two temperatures. Your white wine can be a little warmer and red a little cooler. If white wine is too cold, you lose the nuance of flavor and it ends up being tart and bitter. If red wine is too warm, it just smells like alcohol and you miss out on the other fun and subtle flavors. For white wine stored in the fridge, Hailey recommends taking it out about 30 minutes before pouring; for reds stored at room temperature, she recommends putting it in the fridge about 20 minutes before pouring.
2. "Screw caps are cheap and inferior to corked wine."
Hailey points out that the screw cap was invented in France, the motherland of wine. It was also invented around the '60s and '70s, and since then, many studies have shown the screw cap to work just as well if not better than the cork to keep wine for many years.
3. "All wines improve with age."
If you buy that five dollar bottle of wine from the store and think it'll taste way better in five years, it'll probably be too late by then and you might as well have held on to your five dollars. All wine has a life span and it looks like a bell curve. There's the beginning when it was first bottled and needs some time to settle (this is also why you don't see wines in the store marked with the same year you are shopping in.) As wine ages a bit, it reaches a prime where the wine reaches peak flavor and shines. After that, wine does start to decline, losing the fruit flavor to the point where it starts to become vinegar by the end of its lifespan.
4. "The more expensive it is, the better."
A lot of people think that a bottle of wine is better the more expensive it is. This isn't necessarily true. A lot of great wines are in the middle of that $15 to $30 range. Going higher on the price scale, you're mostly paying for the name on the bottle and the prestige, not necessarily the wine in the bottle.
About Cork & Fizz:
Cork & Fizz was born out of a desire to share my passion for wine with the world. As a company, we believe that wine is not only a beverage, but a work of art that is meant to be shared and enjoyed by anyone and everyone. Wine has always had the incredible ability to bring people together. Before, it was at our dinner table, but now it's over our computers, virtually. Our goal as a company is to make the world of wine more approachable and fun! We hope you enjoy our time spent together but also come out of the class with a bit more knowledge than you had before.
Segment Producer Joseph Suttner. Watch New Day Northwest 11 AM weekdays on KING 5 and streaming live on KING5.com. Contact New Day.