“Room Temperature”
Often times you’ll hear that red wines should be served at “room temperature”. Truth be told red wines show their best after about a half hour in refrigerator (60-65 degrees). White wines should be, conversely, served warmer than standard refrigerator temp. A steady warming before serving to 45 or 50 degrees will allow the subtle aromas that are so important to the wine-tasting experience to become more effusive.

General Food Guidelines
When pairing wine to food or vice versa a very general guideline to follow is to match the intensity of flavors. Subtle or delicate foods like simply white-fleshed fish, sushi/sashimi or sautéed chicken dishes require a soft, elegant white while a hearty bouillabaisse or roasted fowl with herbs may require a big bold Chardonnay or even a an earthy red. Remember trust your palate or check with your Berkeley Wine Company Wine (and Food) guy.

Specific Food Guidelines
Amazingly enough, the perfect foil for spicy dishes, Thai or Sichuan or fiery Indian or Creole, is a nice well-balanced sweet wine. Sweet wine?!? Yes. Sweet wines, that is good sweet wines, require a higher level of acidity to be well balanced. And its that acidity and nothing else that cools the burn. In the process, the high acidity disappears and what’s left is the most incredibly gentle cooling experience.

Myth#1: All Red Wines Get Better with Age.
The truth is that most red wine is made to be drunk upon release. Some notable exceptions are big tannic wines, these include Bordeaux, some California Cabernet Sauvignons, big Spanish reds, Brunellos, Barolos and Amarones and Cru Burgundies.
Best to check with your Berkeley Wine Company Consultant.

Myth #2: All White Wine is Best when Consumed Young.
This is, in the most part, true. Some French whites, Chenin Blanc in particular, Grand Cru Alsace and white Burgundies along with most sweet wines do age quite well. Some of the longest-lived wines in the world are white “moelleux” or soft, mellow and sweet.

Balance
When a wine is balanced all of the elements within the wine are in harmony. Those elements include fruit, acid balance body tannins. When wine is out of balance or disjointed on or more of the elements is more pronounced than the others. On the palate it translates to “something wrong” although its difficult to identify exactly what. A frequent comment is “ I don’t know why, I just didn’t like it”. Translation: No balance.

Rose
ALL PINK WINES ARE NOT SWEET! Color in wine is derived by leaving pressed juice in contact with the skins of red grapes. Let them soak longer, the darker the color. Remove them from the skins earlier and presto change-o – rose. Rose can be made from virtually any red grape and the overwhelming majority are DRY. Generally rose is light, fruity (not sweet) and will go with most fare typically paired with white. They are a summer quaffing treat and a year round delight with crustaceans and poultry.

Champagne- What’s dry?
The restrained richness of champagne wines owes a lot to the cold climate of northern France. Over time the region's wine makers have created their own techniques to overcome the cold winters and short growing seasons. The fact that the grapes ripen very slowly has its benefit too, as the grapes have time to pick up important favoring components. But when the grapes are harvested, they are rarely ripe enough to make table wine without the addition of inordinate amounts of sugar. The producers have gotten around this by making a wine low in alcohol and then putting it through a second bottle fermentation to raise the alcohol and add the bubbles.

Extra Brut, Brut Sauvage, Ultra Brut, Brut Intégral or Brut Zéro — These wines are bone dry with less than .6% of residual sugar per liter. In this case the dosage is of the same wine and not the usual solution of cane sugar and still wine. This wine is rarely made.

Brut — This is the most popular style of champagne. The best blends are always reserved for the brut and is the mainstay of the business. It has less than 1.5% residual sugar and is very dry.

Extra Dry, Extra Sec — Sweetened with 1.2 to 2% residual sugar per liter, it is dry. It goes well with desserts and wedding cakes.

Sec — Although it means "dry" in French, it means "moderately dry" or "slightly sweet" as it pertains to champagne. It has 1.7 to 3.5% residual sugar per liter.

Demi-Sec — This style is distinctly sweet or medium sweet and is rarely seen in the United States. It contains between 3.3 to 5% residual sugar per liter.

Doux — This is the sweetest style of champagne. It is very sweet and is more of a dessert-style wine. It has a minimum of 5% residual sugar per liter.

Misconceptions
Pinot Grigio is not an Italian Grape. It was originally cultivated in Burgundy, France and is a mutation of Pinot Noir, a red grape. There it is called Pinot Gris or “gray Pinot” due to a distinct blue/gray hue. Pinot Gris reaches its pinnacle in the mountains and valleys of the Alsace region where it makes world class, age worthy wines of incredible depth and character. California wine producers market wines under both names though they barely resemble the original.

New World Labels vs. Old World Labels
As a rule New World Wines ( U.S, Australia, New Zealand, South America, South Africa) display the grape variety most prominently on the label whereas Old World Wines (all of Europe) display the geographical origin of the wine. Typically the small the area of designation the finer the wine.