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July
07
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Restaurant Wine Serving Tips
If your restaurant will be serving wine, you must take care to serve
it properly. Wine served properly can enhance and optimize the taste
and bouquet, while serving it improperly will cause your wine to
taste differently, even badly.
Temperature
Most wines have a proper serving temperature for optimal taste.
Light colored wines, including white wines, rosés and most sparkling
wines will taste their best if served chilled at about 45 to 50
degrees. This temperature can be obtained by refrigerating the wine
for about 1 - 2 hours before serving. Red wines are usually best
served at a slightly cool room temperature, typically 60 to 65
degrees. Remember that on a hot day, all wines should be served
slightly cooler than usual.
Chilling Wine
Your restaurant should have a proper ice bucket which allows you
to fill it about 3/4 full of ice with some water. Place the wine in
the bucket for 30 minutes before serving. Having the wine properly
chilled will let your customers taste the wine at its best.
Glassware
The shape of the glass that wine is served in has an effect on
the taste and bouquet of any wines you serve. Your restaurant should
have the proper glassware for serving wines, this includes champagne
glasses, flutes, rhines, port glasses, sherry glasses and all
purpose wine glasses. White wine should be served in tulip shaped
glasses. Red wine should be served in larger, rounded glasses with a
nice size bowl. Sparkling wine and champagne should be served in
tall and thin flute glasses.
Opening The Bottle
The server should use a high quality corkscrew to open the wine
for the customer. There are several types of corkscrews, including
the traditional, winged and screwpull. A restaurant should usually
use a waiters corkscrew, made in stainless steel, it has a very
sharp, serrated foil cutter with a thumb stud and a 5 turn steel
spiral. Using the waiters corkscrew, remove the foil using the
blade. Push the point of the corkscrew into the middle of the cork.
Continue twisting the corkscrew until just one loop remains above
the cork. Place the notch on top of the lever onto the lip of the
wine bottle. Hold the tip of the lever against the bottle's lip,
while using your other hand to stabilize the bottle, then slowly
lift the lever to ease the cork out of the bottle about two thirds
of the way. Grab the rest of the cork with your fingers and twist
out. Use a napkin to wipe any wine from the bottle.
By
Lydia Quinn
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Happy shopping.
Indulge your senses,
Leslie Maliepaard
WineWeb.co.za Editor
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