How to be Cool with Wine

By Tim Teichgraeber,
Contributing Writer

We've all felt a little self-conscious with wine. I've broken off corks with a dozen people watching. I've splashed wine out of my glass when I was trying to swirl. I've drooled red spit down my shirt after spitting a taste. I've confused Stag's Leap Winery with Stag's Leap Vineyard and even said "Pouilly Fume" when I meant Pouilly Fuisse." If there's hope for me, there's hope for you.

Think of this as the Arthur Fonzerelli crash course in wine cool. In this ten-minute course, I'll give you an insider's course on how to slide through the wine world with unruffled ease, adored by all, sipping nothing but the finest along the way.

Rule #1: The Forrest Gump Rule. Nobody likes a dumb question more than an expert does! Believe me, sommeliers lie awake at night rehearsing the moment someone will ask them what malolactic fermentation is or how pinot noir is different from petit verdot. When you say, "I'm looking for a wine that won't make my tongue hurt. Can you recommend something?" you're giving them a chance to strut their stuff, and they'll love you for it!

It's important to remember that sharing wine and serving wine are cornerstones of wine culture. Most wine pros know that, and if they can't share a glass with you, they'll at least want to share a description with you. If you make people feel needed and important, you'll always be welcome.

Rule #2: The James Bond Rule. Always, and I mean always keep one chilled bottle of Champagne in your refrigerator at all times. It doesn't matter how experienced or naïve you are, bubbly is fun and it tastes great. You may feel that you need a special excuse to pop a bottle, but with a chilled bottle at hand, you'll soon realize that a hot date, a little raise, or maybe even a layoff is enough reason to laissez les bontemps perlant. You get bonus points if you keep a rose Champagne on deck. That shows that you not only aren't intimidated by the popular misconception that rose Champagne is cheap, but also know it tastes heavenly and the rosy tint is part of the fun!

Rule #3: The Martha Stewart Rule. Many of the most enjoyable wines are really inexpensive. Sure they come from weird regions that are hard to pronounce, but they taste great. The problem is that they're often tucked away in a remote corner of the store and reserved for special customers. To find them, you need insider information.

Magazines are great for learning about hot new wines, but in a lot of cases you'll never find that particular vintage of that particular Sardinian red on the shelves of your local store. What you might not have imagined, though, is that a good Twin Cities store may have an equally good Sardinian red that never was reviewed by the same magazine. You'll find troves of insider wine tips at specialty wine shops. You just have to ask for help.

I recommend a two-pronged approach to seeking "insider" wines.

The first approach is a variation on the Forest Gump Rule above. Throw your humble self at the infinitely wise wine clerk's feet, do a little "Mama says red wine is good for the heart…" act and ask for a good red that costs $10 or less. If they try to up-sell you, grimacing and pulling your pockets inside out works well. You'll probably be led around the store for 30 minutes and leave with three of the world's great bargains. Trust me -- I do it all the time!

The second method is a stealth approach. To coax tips out of some of the more snobbish insiders, you'll need to convince them that you are a kindred spirit – an insider in lamb's clothing, if you will.

I heard of one wine shop manager who reserved highly allocated bottles of big-ticket Roederer Cristal Champagne for customers that he deemed worthy of the wine, refusing to sell it to those he thought wouldn't appreciate it, i.e. people who had heard about it in a hip-hop tune. Though patently racist and a bad business strategy, this sort of policy isn't as rare as you might think.

Sometimes the best way to walk home with a rare gem is to convince the seller that you'll appreciate it. You do this by dropping the name of a specialist grower or vintner that mostly only insiders know. If you're shopping for the finest pinot noir, mention the words "Gary Pisoni" or "Merry Edwards." If you're looking for a syrah, say "Sean Thackery" or even "Tom Dehlinger." These are the passwords to the best the store or restaurant has to offer.

Rule #4: The Jerry Lewis Rule. The key to that ridiculous wine swirling trick is to get some good glassware. Without it, you'll look like France's favorite bumbling American playing the role of Carrie at the high school prom. Tulip shaped glasses that are fat and round at the bottom and tapered at the top not only make good wine smell and taste twice as good, they also make it possible to swirl your wine like a hipster.

As much as I'd like to tell you that swirling wine in the glass is nothing more than an annoying affectation, it's actually an indispensable technique for wine appreciation. Swirling wine around the glass aerates the wine and fills the glass with the aromas of the wine so you can drink it in with your nose. Everyone finds it clumsy at first, but with a little practice, it's easy. Start training with the glass flat on a table and move it in small circles for practice. Rinse. Repeat.

If you're in the market for glasses, Riedel and Spiegelau are the industry leaders in stemware design, and you can expect to pay $8 to $15 a stem for good all-purpose wine glasses from those makers. With your new pro gear and attitude, you'll be as slick as Dean Martin.

Rule #5: The Peggy Hill Rule. A lot of wine comes from strange European countries with strange ways of saying those long vowel-laden words on the label. French, Italian and especially German wines are pronunciation minefields. In my experience, the person correcting your mispronunciation of an Italian producer is as likely to be wrong as you are. Listen, be flexible, and don't sweat it. Pick up a phrasebook if you need pronunciation tips, but you don't have to speak fluent Klingon to enjoy wine.

To make matters worse, in the U.S., we often try to pronounce a French word the way the French pronounce it, which is no easy task. Our tongues just weren't made to do those things! We should probably take a lesson from the British, who unashamedly anglicize foreign words all the time. For example, take Bollinger Champagne: The French say Bawl-en-jay', the Germans say Bowl'-ing-ger, and Americans say everything in between. Brits just call it "Bolly." Ghislain de Montgolfier of Bollinger told me personally that he couldn't care less what you call it.

Rule #6: The Teichgraeber Rule. Know when to shut up about wine and talk about something else. Wine brings people together, but endless wine jibber-jabber drives others away like cheap cologne.

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