Have a question about how wine cooling systems work?  Wondering about the similarities and differences between various wine racks and wine racking kits?  Need help choosing the right wine cabinet for your needs and living space?  Perhaps you simply want to learn more about how wine preservation systems work to keep your open bottles as fresh as possible?  Now is the time to take advantage of Vintage Cellars’ own Wine Storage Education Center.  Packed with information about these topics, plus additional information pertaining to various wines, opening and serving wine, wine cellars, humidity control, thermoelectric and vapor compression cooling, the science of aging wine, wine glasses, decanters, and much more, the Wine Storage Education Center is your source for information concerning all things wine-related.  With technical, historical, and even scientific articles,  you’re bound to come away learning something new about the wine you love.  And perhaps you’ll be inspired to try some of the tips you read at home?

• An example of a versatile article that covers much ground is Stephanie Warren’s The Science of Wine Aging.  In this engaging composition, Stephanie succinctly provides a brief history of wine aging, delves into the chemistry of wine aging discussing compounds like esters and tannins, explains how oxidation impacts wine, and reveals the ideal conditions in which wines age the best.  That’s quite a bit!
• Wine Opener: A step-by-step article on how to properly present and open a bottle of wine at the table.
• In Decanters & Decanting, decanting procedures are discussed in detail along with how decanting varies for wines of various ages, how quickly to serve wines after decanting, etc.

The Wine Storage Education Center is designed to be a valuable resource to enhance your wine enjoyment.  Visit often to learn about the latest developments in wine technology, as well as wine basics!

In a previous post, Dine With Open Wine, we discussed some of the benefits of decanting wine.  While it’s one thing to read about what decanting does to a wine, experiencing it is another matter.  And what better way to experience the dramatic impact decanting has than to conduct your own comparison of decanted and non-decanted wine at home, or with a group of adventurous guests?  You’ll obviously need a good bottle of wine–try this with one of your favorites to really appreciate the effect–and a decanter such as the Riedel Cabernet Wine Decanter or, if you really want to impress, the Riedel Ultra Magnum Decanter.  Next, make sure the glasses you’re using match the wine you’re serving.  (For instance, don’t use white wine glasses if you’re pouring Merlot, etc.)  Wondering about the variety of wine glasses available? Check out our article on types of wine glasses in the Education Center. Ready to shop? We have a full line of Riedel glassware.

After you have selected your wine, open it and fill a set of glasses with it directly from the bottle.  Next, gingerly pour the remaining wine into the decanter of your choice.  (N.B. Most decanted wines begin to open in minutes, so it’s best to serve them shortly after decanting.)  Have your guests smell and taste their wine which came directly from the bottle.  Now, pour the decanted wine into a second set of glasses, and let your guests compare the boutique, taste, and finished of the decanted wine with that which was not decanted.  It’s a guarantee you’ll see many wide, pleasantly-surprised eyes!   While decanting will not make a “bad” wine into an instant winner, it will certainly enhance the appeal of average wines, and substantially augment the pleasure of exceptional wines.  Still not convinced?  Try hosting a decanting party and taste for yourself!  The reward is worth it!  For more detailed information about decanting, or other wine-related topics visit our Wine Storage Education Center online.  Happy decanting!

Dads deserve appreciation all the time, but it’s especially important to make Father’s Day the one day that your dad will remember forever—or, at least, until next June. And today, you’re in luck: if your dad is into sports or wine, you can sit back and let Vintage Cellars take the work out of shopping for the perfect Father’s Day gift.

Sporty Dads

If your Dad spends most of his weekends on the golf course, check out our line of Mulholland Leather Bags and Golf Equipment. Help Dad relax and have fun with the Endurance Sunday Bag, an all-leather bag designed for the practice range, short-yardage courses, and casual games of weekend golf with buddies and brothers. Or, if he wouldn’t part with his current bag, a Golf Ball and Tee Holder might be a good bet. This beautiful piece holds three balls and four tees, and the leather loop and buckle allow Dad to easily attach it to his favorite golf bag.

If your father isn’t into golf, the All Leather Shoe Bag or Endurance Shoe Bag can be used to carry shoes for all sports: cleats for football or baseball, running sneakers, bowling shoes, or even wrestling and volleyball shoes. And, of course, both bags work well for golf shoes, too.

 

 

Wine-Loving Dads

If your father isn’t the most athletic of men, Vintage Cellars has you covered. Help Dad create a relaxing environment with our Rogar Estate Wine Opener with Antique Bronze Finish, Hardwood Handle, & Table Stand. This magnificent showpiece adds style to any wine room, kitchen, living room, or den. If Dad liked to keep things simple, our Rogar Estate Pewter Wine Opener would make a perfect addition to his wine accessory drawer. For other ideas, our complete collection of Rogar Accessories is worth a look.

If fancy wine openers aren’t Dad’s thing, try our Riedel “O” stemless glassware. The Complete Stemless Wine Glass Collection is a set of 12, each specially designed to enhance the flavors of a separate wine varietal. If Dad doesn’t need a large set, you can get him the set of 2 “O” wine glasses that is suited for his favorite wine, such as these”O” Cabernet/Merlot Stemless Wine Glasses.

If your dad’s perfect Father’s Day gift isn’t featured here, you can always contact us with questions as you browse the rest of our online catalog.

Happy Father’s Day from Vintage Cellars!

With appropriately-matched, quality wine glasses like Riedel Sommelier Wine Glasses or Riedel Vinum Extreme Wine Glasses, it is not only easier to notice the characteristic fragrances and tastes of your selected wine, it is also easier to see the beauty of your delicate beverage.  With a clear wine glass, the clarity, color and depth of your wine are highlighted like never before, allowing you to more accurately judge your wine’s age, the types of grapes used in its making, and even the climate of the vintage.  You can even learn about your wine when swirling to open it.  When swirling, your wine will create “legs” (or, in the more poetic French, “tears”).  These are the small droplets that form in the ring above the surface of your wine while you swirl it.  It was once believed that the more legs a wine had, the better its quality.  However, this is untrue, as various atmospheric conditions (and physics!) have expunged this myth.   What is true is that the speed of falling legs can tell you about the wine’s sugar concentration and richness.  Generally, slower falling wine legs denote richer wines high in sugar content as opposed to thinner wines with less sugar.  Try examining the tears of both a sweet and a dry Riesling with Riedel Sommeliers Riesling Grand Cru Wine Glasses.  You’ll be in for an educational treat!  While aroma and taste play such an important part in wine appreciation, paying attention to appearance, too, greatly enhances the tasting experience.  In fact, visual cues can even suggest additional possibilities to your palate you may have initially filtered out!

Want to learn the basics about decanters and decanting? Check out our Decanting article in the Wine Storage Education Center!

There’s something refreshing about properly-decanted wine, especially when served with the main course!  Some savvy restaurants practice the art of decanting so that your wine will open to its fullest by the time your meal arrives.  The arts of cooking, serving, sipping, and eating all depend on timing.  One disruption to the balance of a prepared meal is a carefully-selected wine that is closed come mealtime.  Waiting for it to open may make your food go cold, and it also disrupts the pace of the dinner.  In short, decanting is a terrific way to help make your wine-paired dinners as well-timed as those you experience in your favorite restaurants.

Though you may already be decanting wine at home, the use of a specialized decanter helps your wine oxidize quicker while adding an element of visual grace and elegance.  In particular, Riedel wine decanters are carefully shaped to allow a greater amount of wine to come into contact with the air.  Unlike a common water pitcher, the Grape Riedel Wine Decanter is crafted for “full oxygenation” which definitely improves the taste and aroma of your favorite wine.  The graceful, mouth blown Riedel Amadeo Lyra Decanter, launched in 2006 to celebrate Reidel’s 250th anniversary, adds additional elegance and style to your wines’ presentation.  The Riedel Extreme Decanter, dubbed “The Work of Art Decanter” by the New York Times, is designed to encourage young wines to open, as well as vintage wines.  (Decanting older wines just before serving helps keep a wine’s brilliance and clarity from being impaired by sediments that may have developed over the years).  No matter what Riedel wine decanter you choose, you’ll be bringing the best of the science of oxygenation and hand-crafter art together, with wine, for a memorable dining experience.

 

If you’re a wine aficionado, you’ll be drooling over this 4-bottle wine saving system by WineKeeper. WineKeeper makes devices that preserve and dispense open bottles of wine. If you’ve ever wanted to open a special bottle of wine, but haven’t felt up to finishing the whole thing at once, you’ve faced the dilemma of many wine collectors. You don’t want to leave a bottle open to lose some of the precious flavors you’ve been looking forward to, yet you don’t always want to down an entire bottle in one night.

If you’ve ever wanted to savor a bottle over a couple of nights, you might think about investing in a wine preservation system. This Napa 4-bottle WineKeeper is a great option for the home wine collector.

Here’s how it works: piping connected to each wine bottle dispenses nitrogen, replacing the oxygen in the tops of the bottles with this non-reactive gas.  While oxygen will interact with the chemicals in the wine, changing the way the flavors taste and pushing the wine towards rancid, nitrogen doesn’t.  Your wine is preserved in perfect condition, allowing you to drink it at your leisure.  When you’re ready to enjoy your wine, the WineKeeper smoothly dispenses it into your glass.

In addition, the WineKeeper keeps your wines at the correct temperature, and this model even comes with dual temperature zones, so you can store both whites and reds perfectly at once.  Perfectly kept wine, always at hand?  Sign me up!

Three Vintage Cellars custom wine cellar projects were recently featured in Wine Spectator magazine. You can click that link to see the original article; in this post we are focusing on the details of one of the cellars. Click the photos for larger versions.

The Gilliland wine cellar in San Diego, built in 2009, was designed to be the focal point of the dining room. This is a small wine cellar, holding only 750 bottles or so, but it has a lot of personality. To create the space for the wine cellar, a bump-out was added to the wall. You can see the framing for this addition below:

This framing allowed for about 80 square feet of wine cellar space. After constructing the addition, the entire area was sealed, vapor-barriered and insulated to maintain temperature and prevent moisture build-up (you can read more about building a wine cellar on the main site).

The Gilliland cellar was outfitted with wine racks and display shelving, including a display area on the left side that isn’t shown in Wine Spectator:

There is also adjustable shelving for large-format bottles in the center of the room (you can also see a Rogar Estate bottle opener in the foreground; there is a 10% off coupon for these openers available on the Vintage Cellars Facebook, Twitter and email newsletter right now!):

The cellar is outfitted with insulated glass doors framed by a stone facade and opens into the dining room.

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Small wine cellars can pack a surprising amount of wine and interesting features into a minimal space. This cellar, designed to enhance the owner’s enjoyment of their collection rather than to store investment wines, is a perfect example of how a small wine cellar can be a big enhancement to a home.

Ready to think about your own custom wine cellar project? Check out more Vintage Cellars custom wine cellars and call us for a free quote and design assistance.

If you have a growing wine collection, there’s one thing you can’t do without: a system for keeping track of your bottles.  Ok, you need a proper storage space and a climate-controlled environment too, but once you have those things, organization really is essential.  If you don’t know what’s in your cellar, your collection can quickly turn into chaos.

Keeping track of the bottles you buy and drink is the only way you can ensure that your collection grows the way you want it to.  But if you’re like me, your average organizational techniques consist of scribbled post-it notes and lists that you are continually losing.  Your wine collection deserves better.

Disorganized wine enthusiasts, meet eSommelier, “The World’s Finest Wine Cellar Management System”.  It uses a touch screen system to track the bottles you have in your cellar, giving you an easy, elegant way to keep in touch with your wine.

Here are a few of its coolest features:
• It shows you the price you paid for the wine and compares that to its current value.  
• It uses a simple color-coded system to show you how close any given wine is to optimal drinking age.
• It includes a bar code printed that makes a unique label for each wine you bring into the cellar, giving each bottle a unique address and identity that lets you know where it is at any time.  
• You can access your eSommelier database from your kitchen or even from the wine store, letting you know at the touch of a button which bottles you already have, and which will be the perfect additions to your collection.

It’s definitely pricey, but there’s no comparing this system to a pen-and-paper log or excel spreadsheet. eSommelier is truly the ultimate wine management system.

1. These Diamond Cube wine racks.  You can stack them to fit your space perfectly, and the shape is so unique and cool.

2.  This Vinotheque Wine Credenza.  It’s a beautiful place to display your family photos, it’s a buffet table, and it’s top-of-the-line, climate-controlled wine cabinet.

3.  This 6-bottle Monterey WineKeeper system.  Ok, so you’d probably have to be a restaurant owner to need this model, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dream, right?  This system would mean that you could open multiple bottles at once for a tasting, and then keep them fresh for weeks. And we have the more reasonably-sized ones, too, if you just can’t see giving up your microwave for this baby.

4.  This VintageView Floor-to-Ceiling Wine Rack.  There’s something to be said for the modern touches in wine cellars, and it’s pretty cool to be able to display all your bottle labels.

5.  This Eurocave Performance 3-Temperature Wine Cabinet.  The king of all wine cabinets. Three temperature zones. No bottle need ever be improperly chilled again.

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.