Professional Drinking

If you hang around wine people, you’ll hear the phrases new world versus old world wines.  It seems like a simple phase but it has meaning for taste and other factors when you drink each of these wines. Larger scale wine production started with the Greeks and...

We’ve all seen it – wine connoisseurs swirling their wine, dipping their noses into the glass and taking a big whiff.  But, is this the right way?  How do the experts smell their wine? Glassware is the first thing that matters for the olfactory appreciation...

At some business dinners, the wine can make up over 50% of the total bill and that leaves the host to wonder, “how should I tip on the wine?”  Should I tip less on the wine and blend the overall tip, or should I tip the Sommelier separately?  This is...

Any time you throw a dinner party, perhaps for your boss or some important clients, you want everything to be perfect. But how do you make sure your wine glasses meet the standard – the right ones, cleaned and ready to enjoy wine out of? Good wineglasses are important...

Picture this: The sommelier pours the first taste of a recently opened bottle and stands expectantly, waiting for you to taste it and declare the bottle acceptable. But what are you really supposed to be tasting for? If the wine is well balanced? Too tart? Just right?...

So, how can you tell if the person coming to your table knows what they are talking about?  Well, if you carefully check their lapel pin, the color of their pin will tell you what level of certification they have achieved. Being a sommelier is a time-honored...

Can you remember the first wine that you fell in love with the first time you sipped it? The ephemeral experience of a wine that tickled all the right spots, made you want another sip, and caused you to become a fan? When that happens, it often becomes one of your...

We can thank the Romans for bringing the art of growing grapes and making wine to all of the areas they conquered over the centuries. But the homeland of the empire, Italy, has been making delicious wines for thousands of years. That means they know what they are...

Every restaurant tries to strike a balance between offering an impressive and encyclopedic wine list with one that its customers can pick a selection from with relative ease. But the kinds of restaurants we typically wine-and-dine clients at usually fall at the phone...