Well, our last post was about wine-friendly apps for the iPhone.  So it’s only fair that this time, we talk about what kind of wine apps Blackberry users should take advantage of.  Droid users, don’t feel left out–you’re up next!

Wine Enthusiast Guide: Called “the ultimate wine companion” by developers, this app contains a database of wine reviews, with 1,000 new ones added each month.  Currently it has information about more than 80,000 wines.  It allows you to search by varietal, style, rating, or price, and includes a “my lists” section that allows you to save and manage your favorite wines.  This app really allows you to get an instant–and expert–read on the bottle in front of you.  It’s pricey at $9.95, but a comprehensive resource indeed.  Check it out here.

R-Vintage: If you’re looking for something a little more wallet-friendly, you might want to try the R-Vintage app by REGARD.  Its database isn’t as comprehensive as that of the Wine Enthusiast Guide, but at $3.99, it’s more cost effective.  This app allows users to get instant reviews on the vintage they’re considering, whether they’re at a wine shop or a restaurant.  It tells you the best years for a particular grape, giving you extra info for many different wines.  Try it here.

Nat Decants Food and Wine Matcher: This app, by well-known wine connoisseur Natalie MacLean, is a sommelier application that offers more than 380,000 food and wine pairings.  Natalie MacLean was named the World’s Best Drink Writer at the World Food Media Awards, and she offers matches for every dish under the sun.  Her favorites include: planked salmon with Canadian or Oregonian Pinot Noir, barbecued spare ribs with Australian Shiraz, and grilled hamburgers with California Zinfandel.  At $2.99, it’s a good deal.  Check it out here.

When you’re shopping for wine, you don’t always have a wine expert -or even your computer- close at hand.  But no fear.  There are tons of apps available for your iPhone that can help you pick a bottle.  Check out a few of our favorites:

Wine Snob:  Wine snob gives you detailed information about the bottle in your hand.  It contains a comprehensive database of wines and their prices, location, and tasting notes.  It also allows you to share your findings via Google Maps, email, and Twitter, and to store wines you love for future reference.  The best thing about Wine Snob is that the information is combined by professional sommeliers and winemakers, so you know the info you’re getting is the real deal.  It’s available on iTunes for $2.99.

Drync Wine:  Drync Wine is a great app for serious wine collectors.  Its developer wanted a simple way to track the wines he was drinking.  Drync is what he created.  Here’s how it works: you rate the bottle of wine you’re drinking and take a few tasting notes on it.  You take a photo of the label so that you can remember it (and find it again if you liked it), and then you save it to your virtual cellar.  Drync is a great app for helping you build and keep track of your collection.  Try the free trial version now.

Pair It!: We most often drink wine with dinner (ok, sometimes lunch too).  But as we’ve discussed many times on this blog, creating the perfect food and wine pairing is no easy task.  You can enter either the food you’re making or the wine you plan to drink into the app, and it will give you some ideas for perfect combinations.  Or, you can “swirl” your iPhone to see a random pairing.  Pair It! really takes care to consider all of a wine’s subtle details when making its suggestions, so we trust its opinion.  Get it at here for $4.99.

Last week, we talked about Claus Riedel’s obsession with designing the perfect wine glass.  One of his objectives was to direct the wine to the “correct” part of the mouth so that the right taste buds would make first contact.  Well, that seems logical–we all remember those “tongue maps” like the one below from elementary school science class, right?  But here’s the catch: your tongue doesn’t work like that.  And what’s more, researchers have known it for at least 30 years.

The myth: 1. Bitter 2. Sour 3. Salty 4. Sweet

Ridel’s advancements in glass design have made a huge impact on the wine industry.  Many experts, we at Vintage Cellars among them, agree that enjoying your wine from the correct glass can make a huge difference in the aroma and flavor of your wine.  Check out our post on the subject to learn more.  But please don’t believe any glassware’s claims to direct the wine to the “right” area on your tongue, because there isn’t one.

Want to know how your sense of taste really works?  Here’s a little science:

You know all those tiny bumps covering the surface of your tongue?  Those aren’t your taste buds.  They are called papillae, and your taste buds sit on some of them.  When you take a sip of wine, it mixes with your saliva and enters small openings on your tongue to come in contact with your taste receptors.   (You have many different kinds of receptors; they are what help you sense heat, noise, light, and everything else in the world around you.)  The taste receptor cells send information through your seventh, ninth, and tenth cranial nerves to the areas of the brain that process and interpret taste.

Schematic drawing of a taste bud

You have between 2,000 and 8,000 taste buds that can sense at least five tastes: sweet, salty, biter, sour, and umami (or savory).  Although there is some variation, all of your taste buds detect the five tastes more or less equally, regardless of their location on the tongue.

So then how did the myth get started?

In 1901, a German research paper on taste by a scientist named D.P. Hanig was mistranslated by a Harvard academic.  Hanig had simply concluded that sensitivity to various tastes seems to vary between different tongue locations.  From this paper arose the infamous tongue map.  No one challenged this interpretation until 1974, when a scientist named Virginia Collins re-examined Hanig’s paper and found that all five tastes can be detected anywhere there are taste buds.  Put a little sugar on the back of your tongue.  Even though according to the tongue map, it’s the front part that perceives “sweet,” you’ll find that you can taste it no matter where it’s placed.

Collins’ conclusion: there are indeed variations in how receptors in different parts of the tongue detect tastes.  But the variations are so small that they are insignificant.  Unfortunately, wine glass makers have chosen to promote the first part, prolonging the myth, and ignore the second part.

So by all means, go out and shop for the best wine glasses for your favorite wine, whether it’s Chardonnay or Cab.  The correct shape and size can do wonders to improve the flavors of your favorite wine.  But shop wisely: any claims a company makes involving your “tongue map” are simply ludicrous.

There are a lot of wine accessories and contraptions out there.  It can be tough to tell which ones are just a waste of money, and which can really enhance your wine-drinking experience.  One thing that’s not a gimmick?  The idea that different wines should have different glasses.

Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with having just the standard four varieties of glasses: red wine, white wine, port and champagne.  But having specific glasses for different grape varieties, styles, and even ages of wines can really make a difference in your tasting experience.  The right glass can bring out nuances of flavor and aroma that your standard tasting glass wouldn’t.

Claus Riedel was the first person to was the first wine glass designer to recognize that the size and shape of the glass can affect the tasting experience.  He began designing wine glasses specifically engineered to help get the most aroma and flavor out of different types of wine.  Riedel (pronounced “Rhee-dell”) is widely regarded as the world’s premiere wine glass producer.  Tests have been done, and the majority of experts and amateurs alike agree that using the “right” glass for the wine is well worth it.

Riedel worked with tasters to determine:

• Which glass sizes emphasize the appropriate aromas in different wines
• Which shapes and sizes exhibit the appropriate fruitiness levels
• Which shapes and sizes exhibit the appropriate tannin levels
• Which shapes direct wines to the “right” part of the tongue

The ability of any wine glass to obtain any of these qualities should be taken with a grain of salt.  For example, the idea of a “tongue map,” or that specific parts of the tongue taste specific flavors, isn’t supported by science (but we’ll save a discussion of this issue for a future post).  But the size and shape of the bowl, at least in the opinions of many experts, can definitely influence the way you perceive the flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel of the wine.

Riedel offers a huge variety of wine glasses, at all different price ranges and for all different wines.  Check out a small selection of their glasses below.  Their most popular series is the mid-price range “Vinum” glasses, which are made of over 24% lead crystal and retail for between $40 and $60 each.  Check out Riedel’s impressive “glass guide,” which allows you to see all their glass options for a particular varietal as well.  If you’re interested in purchasing Riedel glassware, check out the Vintage Cellars’ selection of Riedel glasses and decanters–most glasses are on sale for about 20% less than on the Riedel website.

For the average wine drinker, buying an entire collection of glasses–a set for each kind of wine–seems too overwhelming, let alone expensive.  But no fear–you can still match the appropriate glass to the wine without breaking the bank.  Here are some basic guidelines for matching glasses with wines that can help you get the most enjoyment out of your wine:

For white wines:

• Use a glass with a narrower bowl.  This keeps the surface area, or the amount of wine exposed to the air, at a minimum, so that it stays chilled longer.  White wines taste best and have the most aromatic bouquets when chilled to the appropriate temperature.
• The opening of the glass should also be narrower.  A narrow bowl keeps the subtler aromas of white wine more concentrated, so that when you waft them towards your nose, they don’t dissipate as much, and are detectable.
• For lighter wines like Pinot Grigio and Riesling, use a glass with a narrower bowl and a narrower opening.  (These wines should have limited exposure to oxygen so that they maintain their subtle flavors.)
• For more flavorful whites, such as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, use a glass with a slightly fuller bowl that narrows towards the opening.  (These wines benefit from the aeration provided by the fuller bowl–it helps bring out their flavors.  Both lighter and more flavorful whites need a narrow opening to help keep them chilled and aid in wafting.)

For red wines:

• Use a glass with a wide bowl to let the wine breathe.  The exposure to oxygen will mellow the tannins and bring out the bold flavors of red wine.  A wide bowl also allows the aromas to collect, giving you the maximum opportunity to sense them.
• Use a glass with a wider opening.  Besides allowing more air to come in, a wider opening allows room for your to dip your nose right inside the glass for a proper tasting.

Tips:

• Always fill glasses one-third full.  This makes sure oxygen can get in, and leaves you room to swirl the wine, with helps it release aromas for you to enjoy.
• It’s best to wash wine glasses with very hot water only–if you have to use detergent, limit yourself to a few drops.  Soap causes buildup in your glasses that interferes with the tastes of the wine.

Investing in a collection of wine glasses suited to many different types of wine is a big decision.  But it’s no gimmick: in wine tasting, size and shape really do matter.

No, these terms don’t refer to the respective positions you end in before and after wine tasting.  Instead, horizontal and vertical are two different types of tastings, or comparing wines by sampling them.  The best way to judge wines is to compare them side-by-side, and so, a couple of different methods have developed to facilitate the best way to do that.

There are many different ways to organize wines for a tasting.  You can, for example, choose wines in a certain price point or from a certain part of the world.  But if you want to taste like the pros, you’ll decide on either a vertical tasting or a horizontal tasting.

Vertical wine tastings are best if you want to learn about a particular wine producer and the style of their wines.  It involves tasting several wines from the same winemaker.  You can take a variety of wines, but most vertical wine tastings limit themselves to one wine from several different vintages.  This is a great way to learn a lot about wine quickly, because it allows you to compare wines that are identical except for the vintage.  Since the only differences between the wines will be their year, what you’ll learn in a vertical wine tasting is how greatly the growing conditions affect the final product.  The subtle differences between vintages really become apparent in a vertical wine tasting, and you’ll probably learn that the variation from vintage to vintage is actually much larger than you thought.  Vertical wine tastings help develop your palate by teaching you to pick out subtle differences between wines.

To host your own vertical wine tasting, all you need is a few different vintages from the winery of your choice.  An ideal vertical tasting would have one bottle of every vintage every made by a certain producer, but this isn’t usually practical or even possible.  Realistically, there are no limitations on the number of bottles you should taste, but since the more you sample, the more you learn, you might want to call over some friends to help you.  Serve the wines in chronological order from youngest to oldest, so that your palate moves from the simpler young wines to the more complex and subtle flavors of the old ones.

Horizontal wine tastings are a great way to learn about the differences between producers.  In a horizontal wine tasting, you taste several different wines from the same vintage.  The wines usually have something more in common as well.  Usually, the wines in a horizontal wine tasting come from the same region.  If they don’t, the characteristics can be so different that you really won’t get much out of tasting them.  But you don’t have to be limited by region.  A more casual horizontal tasting could include just white wines, wines from a single variety of grape, or whatever parameters you choose, as long as each bottle is the same vintage.

Wine tastings are a great event to do with a group, whether its a small and intimate one or a loud, large party.  They make the perfect ice breaker, giving your guests an instant topic of conversation.  And wine tastings always tend to be full of fun and laughter.  By making your basic tasting into a vertical or horizontal tasting, you give yourself and your guests the opportunity to really get something out of the tasting by learning more about the wine and educating your palate.

If you didn’t already know about it, for the last few days, Dana Point has been playing host to the annual California Wine Festival.  This is a new venue for this event, and it looks like a great one: the whole event takes place beachside on the grass at picturesque Doheny State Beach.  The festival started on Thursday, but don’t fret if you didn’t know about it–the grand finale event takes place tomorrow.

From 1-4PM on Saturday, April 24 (that’s tomorrow!), participants will be able sample unlimited food and wine, while enjoying the sun, ocean, and music.  Hundreds of California wines will be available, as well as dozens of gourmet appetizers, cheeses and breads, fresh fruits, and craft-brewed beers too.  If it’s anything like the annual San Diego Wine and Food Festival, it’s sure to be a great time.  Tickets are $59 in advance and $75 at the gate, so if you can make it, order yours now.  Here is the link to the event page.  Cheers!

1.  Uncorking the bottle before  service improves the wine.

It’s true that aeration before service does improve some wines.  But studies show that the neck of a wine bottle is too narrow to allow enough oxygen to get in contact with the wine to make any detectable difference in the taste and aroma.  If you want to aerate your wine, decant it.  A quick decanting is great for removing the sediment that may have collected in the bottom of your older wines, and a longer decanting is great for young red wines that are still tannic.  Want to learn how to properly decant a bottle?  Click here.

2.  Serve white wines with chicken or fish and red wines with red meat.

This is one of the oldest and most enduring wine myths.  Whether a wine is white or red doesn’t have as much to do with which dishes it should be matched with as do the specific qualities and flavors of both the food and the wine.  The most important quality to consider when pairing food and wine is balance.  A wine should complement the food, accentuating its flavors.  It should not overwhelm the food, and the food should not overwhelm it.

For example, buttery salmon cooked over a wood fire would pair nicely with a Chardonnay, which has buttery flavors from aging and oak flavors from being kept in wood barrels.  A steak pairs well with an aggressive red wine that’s high in tannins and acid: the tannins bind to the proteins in the wine, acting as a natural palate cleanser and refreshing the mouth to enjoy each delectable bite of meat with fresh taste buds.  Pairing wine with food is nothing short of an art, with many subtle nuances to consider.  To learn more about it, click here.

3.  ”Reserve” wines are of superior quality.

Although a few countries (Spain is one) have strict regulations governing when winemakers can put “reserve” on the label, the U.S. does not.  Originally, “reserve” wines were those the winemakers held back for themselves.  Logically, they were of better quality, but mostly they were probably just those wines that best fit the winemaker’s personal tastes.  Today, “reserve” has no true meaning, and is placed on the label at the discretion of the winemaker.  Often, the hiked-up price just isn’t justified.

4.  Red wine should never be chilled.

Red wines taste best at a temperature between 55º and 65º.  The average room temperature?  Around 70°.  When wine is served too warm, its alcohol flavors jump to the fore, masking the more subtle–and more enjoyable–flavors and aromas.  The correct temperature to serve a red wine at depends on the individual wine, but in general, lighter reds should be colder, bolder reds warmer.  To see a more detailed explanation of red wine chilling, click here.

5.  Great wines have great “legs.”

Many wine drinkers like to begin a tasting by swirling the glass, then holding it up to appreciate the “legs,” the little rivulets that run down from a swirled glass’s inside rim.  Legs that are many in number and thick, meandering slowly down the glass are said to be “great,” as in, “This wine has great legs.”  But many drinkers confuse great legs with great quality.  In reality, swirling the glass leaves a small quantity of alcohol and water near the top.  The alcohol evaporates first, increasing the surface tension of the leftover water until it gives into gravity and starts flowing back down the glass.  Wines with high alcohol contents will have more legs that are thicker and move more slowly.  Wines higher in alcohol are generally more viscous, so legs can also clue you in about the wine’s viscosity.  But they tell you next to nothing about how good it will taste.

6.  All German wines are sweet.

Germany does produce a lot of sweet wines, but they make many dry ones too.  If you’d like to try a German wine but sweet wines give you a headache, look for the word “trocken” on the label–it means “dry.”

7.  The more a wines costs, the better it will taste.

This is true only as a very general guideline–it is nowhere near a rule.  Though winemakers would love to have you believe that quality of taste is the only thing that dictates price, this is simply not true.  Prices depend on many factors, only a few of which relate to taste.  Things like how costly the harvest was that year, how pricey the land was, fluctuating grape prices, and even where you purchased the bottle have huge impacts on the price, but not necessarily on what’s inside the bottle.

Here’s a common phenomenon: a small, unknown vineyard has a great year, and produces a wine of great quality.  Because it’s not a well-known wine, it’s inexpensive.  Word gets out about this great deal, and the price of the wine goes way up.  But subsequent vintages aren’t as good; the wine is relying on the reputation it got during that one good year to justify its high price, but the quality is no longer there.  So though high price can reflect high quality, there are many scenarios in which it does not.  Do your research and don’t be afraid to try new things: there are many great bottles out there for around $10.

Oaky: Many wines are aged in oak barrels.  Over time, the barrels impart a scent of freshly sawn oak to the wine.  An “oaked” wine can have a variety of different aromas, depending on the age of the barrels.  New barrels contribute stronger flavors to the wine.  Oak aging can give wine characteristics called “toasted,” “roasted,” or “smoky,” tastes that result when the barrels are heat-treated.  Because of the phenolic compound aldehyde, which resides in the wood, oak aging also imparts tastes of vanilla to the wine.  A properly “oaked” wine will have a subtle vanilla scent in the nose.  Oak can overpower other wine flavors, so bold, rich wines carry the flavor best.  A wine that is overwhelmed by oak flavors is said to be “overoaked.”

Tart: Wines that are too sharp and acidic can be called “tart,” referring to the often-unpleasant, almost sour taste that such wines have.

Clarity: A term that refers to a visual quality of the wine.  A wine with “clarity” is not cloudy, hazy or murky.  To test clarity, pour wine into a very clean glass.  Hold it against a white surface (like a tablecloth) and look at the wine through the glass.  Any bits floating in the wine or any cloudiness that is apparent decreases the clarity of the wine.  Wines with great clarity are prized.

Fat vs. Flabby: Though they might mean the same thing when referring to your post-Thanksgiving midsection, these two terms have decidedly different definitions when they are used to describe wine.  ”Fat” is a textural term referring to wines that are concentrated and rich on the palate.  ”Flabby” is fat gone too far: it refers to a wine that is too heavy on the palate, lacking balance, structure, and acidity.

Legs: Pour a taste of wine in your glass.  Swirl it like the pros do by keeping the base of the glass on the table and moving it in small, quick circles.  Be careful not to spill!  Stop swirling and inspect the glass.  Often, you will see small rivulets of wine running down the glass from the inside rim.  These are legs.  Their presence indicates a rich, full-bodied wine with a high alcohol content.  The more viscous and thicker the legs are, the richer and more full-bodied the wine.

Concentrated: When it refers to your orange juice, “concentrated” isn’t a good thing.  But it is a positive term when it refers to wine.  Fine wines, no matter if they are light-, medium-, or full-bodied, should have fruit flavors that taste rich and deep, or concentrated.  A synonym for “concentrated” is “deep.”

Complex: The definition of “complex” changes from one wine expert to another; its meaning is highly subjective.  But a memorable and accurate way to think of “complex” is how “interesting” a wine is.  Is the third glass just as good as the first?  Can the drinker continue to discover new tastes and aromas as he or she drinks?  If the answer to these questions is “yes,” feel free to call your wine “complex.”

Hard: “Hard” wines could also be called “abrasive.”  They are very high in tannins and acids.  Bold, strong wines that are still young can be hard.  Hard wines aren’t for everyone, but this descriptor isn’t necessarily a negative.  However, if a wine is too hard, it’s called “harsh,” which is never a good quality.

Precocious: Just as a precocious child acts older than her age, a precocious wine matures quickly.  Precocious wines can realize their maximum flavors in a relatively short period of time, and so allow an impatient collector to appreciate their benefits quickly.  Precocious wines can also be those wines that will continue to age well over a long period of time, but taste mature early on.

Here’s a new installment to our wine lexicon.  If you missed the first one, “The Top Ten Wine Tasting Terms“, check it out now.

Acetic: When the alcohol in wine oxidizes, it turns into acetic acid.  The common name for acetic acid?  Vinegar.  All wine has some amount of acetic acid, but too much means that the wine has gone bad: most likely, the cork has failed, letting in too much oxygen and causing too much of the alcohol to turn into acetic acid.  If your wine has a prevalent vinegary taste, you could say it’s “acetic.”  And if the taste is any stronger than a “barely detectable” level, you might want dump out the bottle (or better yet, use it for Sangria!) and try again.

Berrylike: As the term implies, this refers to a wine with strong berry flavors (always a fruity red wine).  Common berries that you might perceive are the “dark” berries, like black cherry and blackberry, and other berry flavors that can range from raspberry to strawberry to cranberry and everything in between.

Chewy: If there was ever a strange-seeming wine term, this would be it.  Wine that has a high glycerin (sugar) content gains a texture that can be described as dense, viscous, or fleshy (think thick like milk, not thin like water).  When you drink a very viscous wine, you almost feel as though you should chew it like solid food.  So maybe it isn’t such a strange term after all.

Diffuse: Wines that lack a sense of structure are said to be diffuse.  A diffuse wine’s flavors are muddied, or unfocused and unclear.  Serving red wine at too warm a temperature causes it to taste diffuse.  This is because when wine is too warm, the alcohols overwhelm the bouquet, masking the more subtle, delicious flavors.  If you didn’t know that you should chill your red wine before service, check out our post on the subject here.

Forward: Wine that has bold, easily distinguishable flavors is said to be forward.  Forward wines have been matured to the ideal age, and their full flavor potential has been realized.  The term “forward” is often used in the phrase “fruit-forward,” which refers to a wine that has especially strong fruit flavors.

Green: Wines made with grapes that haven’t been given adequate time to ripen are “green.”  They have a distinct vegetal taste and can have flavors reminiscent of grass, peas, or any other green vegetable.  ”Green” can be a negative term that refers to an immature wine, or it can simply be a descriptor of a wine’s vegetal or herbaceous qualities.  This term isn’t to be confused with the other kind of “green,” which means “environmentally friendly” and has become something of a recent fad.  But we’ll save that for another post.

Hot: No, this term doesn’t refer to a wine that’s served at too warm a temperature, and neither does it refer to a wine that has spicy qualities.  Instead, “hot” wine is wine that has too high an alcohol content and because of it, causes an unpleasant burning sensation in the back of the throat.  Wine that’s more than 14.5% alcohol is often “hot.”  However, a high alcohol content can be balanced by the sweetness of fruity flavors.  So there’s nothing wrong with a really bold wine high in alcohol, as long as it has the bold fruitiness to back it up.

Nose: This one’s pretty simple.  It refers to the aromas in wine that you can detect by smell.  When tasting wine properly, you should start by smelling it, first from a distance, and then deeply, with your nose inside the glass.  The aromas you detect are called the wine’s “nose.”  (And if you didn’t know you should be sticking your nose inside your wine glass to get the full tasting experience, click here to learn more about wine tasting.)