Vinetown Seattle Wine Blog

Here are some of the most common misconceptions about wine that I’ve run across…

MYTH: All wines improve with age

REALITY: Most wine is intended to be consumed with a few months or years. Only certain fine wines—mostly red—have the capacity to improve with age; most will deteriorate over time.

MYTH: You can uncork a bottle of wine to help it breathe

REALITY: Simply removing the cork exposes too little surface area for oxygen to interact with the wine. For wine to truly breathe, it needs to be properly decanted.

MYTH: Wine legs in the glass are an indicator of quality

REALITY: Legs or tears result from alcohol evaporating from the wine on the sides of the glass, leaving a higher water content. This increases surface tension and therefore the formation of droplets, which run down the inside of the glass. This physical process is unrelated to the quality of the wine.

MYTH: Smelling the cork can tell you about the quality of the wine

REALITY: Very little information can be obtained by smelling the cork…you need to smell the wine itself. Even corked wines can’t usually be identified by smelling the cork.

MYTH: Wines labelled “Reserve” are always high quality

REALITY: In many countries, there’s no legal definition of “Reserve”, and the term may be used solely for marketing.

MYTH: Red wine should be served at room temperature; white wine should be served at refrigerator temperature

REALITY: Most red wines are best appreciated when consumed at cooler than room temperature; try putting them in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before serving. Most white wines are best appreciated when consumed a little warmer than refrigerator temperature; try taking them out of the fridge for 15 minutes before serving.

MYTH: Wine turns to vinegar over time

REALITY: Wine mostly oxidizes over time (and especially after opening); very little is actually converted to vinegar. (It’s therefore not generally a good idea to use old wine as a culinary substitute for vinegar.)

MYTH: All red wines should be decanted

REALITY: Decanting is useful for separating out the sediment in some old red wines, and allowing some young red wines to breathe. Many red wines don’t benefit from decanting, and some older wines may even be harmed by decanting through excessive handling and excessive exposure to oxygen.

MYTH: Some people get headaches from sulfites in wine

REALITY: It’s unknown what causes wine-related headaches in the people who experience them, but it’s almost certainly not sulfites. The human body produces about 1,000mg of sulfites per day, and a glass of wine averages about 10mg…a trivial amount. Dried fruits and other foods have much higher sulfite levels than wine. (A related myth is that red wines have more sulfites than white wines; the reality is that red wines typically have fewer added sulfites, since they contain more naturally occurring preservatives, like tannins.)

MYTH: Screw-top wines are always low quality

REALITY: This may have been true in the past, but more and more high-quality wines use screw tops or other modern enclosures to reduce spoilage.

Given that I’ve believed some (or maybe most) of these at one point or another, it really makes me question all of the beliefs I now hold about wine!