Red Red Wine

A couple weeks back, Waiterrant posted a guide entitled "How to Order Wine Without Looking Like an A$#hole". Waiterrant in one of my favorite blogs, and I enjoyed his common sense tips acquired from years of dealing with wine snobs at "The Bistro". Here are some of his comments:

9. DO NOT SMELL THE CORK! - When I see someone do this I know I’m dealing with a complete amateur. Guess what you’re gonna smell? Cork!

12. Taste the wine – Now you take a sip. If the wine tastes like vinegar or smells like moldy cheese it’s bad.

13. Sending the wine back – If the wine’s bad send it back! It’s no skin off our nose. Usually we get a credit from the distributor. In most cases, however, people refuse a perfectly good bottle of wine just because they don’t like it.

15. The Big Glasses – At my bistro we have very serviceable red and white wine glasses. However, some yuppies have a wine glass fetish and insist on sipping $6 Chianti out of a $50 Riedel balloon glass. Stop whining. The big glasses are for people who order older expensive wines that need to breathe. People who drink cheap wine out of the “big glasses” usually want the neighboring tables to think they’re drinking something pricey when they aren’t.

Here are some more wine resources:

Top-rated wines available in the US for under 20 dollars
The Seven best wine blogs
Cooking and Wine Podcasts at Learn out Loud
Flickr's Wine Group (lots of nice photos here)
Wine finder Search Engine (International)

For information on other drinks, visit The Bar, an interactive webpage complete with many recipes and a story telling bartender. To mix on the go, try one of these iPod bartenders.

By the way, the photos above are some of my own. Enjoy UB40's Red Red Wine!