Next time it is your turn to be the host or hostess, opt for a wine-tasting party instead of the same old, same old. Now understand that a wine-tasting party can be as complicated as a five-course meal or as easy as you choose to make it. The degree of difficulty is strictly up to you, but one thing is certain. Your party will not be a rerun of the one you attended last week or last month. Your guests might even actually have fun!

Here are some ideas about how to have a wine-tasting party that will be a big hit:

1.  You might choose bottles of the same wine from different vintage years.

2.  You might choose bottles of the same wine that were bottled in different countries. Choose one wine type and select one bottle from the USA, another from South America, another from Australia, and a traditional European label.

3.  You might remove the labels and have blind taste tests with no hint of type or country or origin.

Which ever wines you choose will be fine and your guests will enjoy the experience of wine tasting. Wine tasting is simply not as complicated as those so-called experts would lead us to believe.

There are basically only five simple steps to wine tasting:

1.  Observe the wine in the glass. Note clarity and color and the presence of sediment.

2.  Smell: Put your nose into the glass and inhale deeply. There should be a pleasant aroma.

3.  Swirl and Smell: Before the wine stops swirling, take another sniff. The aroma should be stronger but still pleasant.

4.  Taste: Take a sip of the wine and move it around in your mouth. You should want another sip.

5.  Evaluate: Only you know whether the wine was a good experience for you. Make your evaluation based on sight, smell, taste, and feel. There are no wrong answers.

Zinfandel is known as California’s heritage grape, and it is just a natural partner with barbecue. Zinfandel is versatile and available in many different styles. It enhances barbecue sauce or marinade when it is added to them, and it adds to the pleasure of eating barbecue when it accompanies the meal. The zinfandel is made from red grapes, but there is also a version known as white zinfandel. White zinfandel has a slightly pink coloring.

Rick Slomka, Canadian Director of the Wine Institute of California, says, “With barbecuing season here, there is no better match than a great Zin paired with spicy, grilled foods. Zinfandels are approachable, easy-drinking reds that reflect the casual, informal appeal of an al fresco get-together.”

Because the red zinfandels are dry, they are a perfect match with spicy food like barbecued meats.

One idea that I really like is to let your guests experiment on their own. The guests will be having fun and decreasing work for you in the process. Set up a table in a nice cool shaded area, open several different bottles of zinfandels, set out some glasses and let your guests try different pairings of meats and wine. Experimentation keeps life (and barbecues) interesting.

I’m not really sure who to give the credit to for this wonderful dessert but it was posted on the Ethnic/International Recipe Exchange as well as by Maatjie Greeff on another South African recipe directory and several other resources have printed it. If you have missed it so far, here it is:

“Cape Tipsy Tart” South African Date & Nut Pudding
Ingredients:

• 250 g dates, stoned and finely chopped
• 5 ml (1 tsp.) bicarb of soda
• 250 ml (1 cup) boiling water
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) butter
• 250 ml (1 cup) sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 500 g cake flour
• 5 ml (1 tsp.) baking powder
• 2 ml (1/2 tsp.) salt
• 250 ml (1 cup) walnuts or pecans, finely chopped

Sauce

• 250 ml (1 cup) sugar
• 15 ml (1 tbs.) butter
• 150 ml water
• 5 ml (1 tsp.) vanilla essence
• Pinch of salt
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) brandy

Method:
Divide dates into 2 bowls, add bicarb to 1 and pour boiling water over, and leave to cool. Cream butter and sugar together and add eggs, beat well.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt and fold into creamed mixture. Add dry portion of dates and nuts and mix well to combine. Stir in cooled bicarb-and-date mixture and pour into a greased baking dish (large) and bake in a preheated oven of 180 degrees centigrade (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 40 minutes.

For Sauce…
Heat sugar, butter and water together in a pan for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla, salt, and brandy. Pour sauce over pudding as soon as you do take it out of the oven and serve hot (preferable) or cold with thick cream.

First, during the first few years of marriage, you can most likely find the identical wine that was served at the couple’s wedding reception. They were likely so busy with host and hostess duties that it is likely they didn’t get more than one taste of the wine at the reception. A bottle that they can share at their leisure will make a wonderful and very thoughtful wedding anniversary gift.

If the couple have been married for more than a few years, it isn’t likely that you will find a bottle of the wine that was served at their wedding reception at a price that you would be willing to pay. If this is the case, you can choose the same wine but of a later vintage, and it will still be a wonderful anniversary gift.

Another choice for an anniversary wine gift might be to have a special wine label made or make one yourself. If you choose to make the special wine bottle label yourself, all you need is a picture of the wedding couple, a pair of scissors, a marker, some glue, and a little imagination. You just design a label yourself and paste it over the label that is already on the bottle of wine. Don’t forget to put the name of the wine on the label unless the couple really likes surprises. There are many companies both online and off that will make wine labels for you.

An anniversary gift of wine is a wonderful way to help the happy couple mark another year of wedded bliss.

The French consume more red wine than white wine, and there are more of the cancer-fighting properties in red wine than in white wine because these properties are mostly found in the skins of the grapes. The skins remain in contact with the juice in the production of red wine much longer than they do in the production of white wine.

I don’t want to get “technical” on you, but the compounds that the scientists have deemed responsible for these health benefits are biologically active phytochemicals. Polyphenols like catechins and resveratrol are believed to have antioxidant or anticancer properties.

Reveratrol is a kind of polyphenol called a phytoalexin. Phytoalexins are a class of compounds produced as part of a plant’s defense system against disease. These compounds are produced by plants to ward off fungus, stress, injury, infection, or just too much sunlight. The skins of grapes contain very high levels of these compounds and, thus, red wine contains high levels of these compounds. High levels of phytoalexins are also found in raspberries, peanuts, and other plants.

The studies being conducted into the cancer-fighting properties of red wine are in their early stages. Your doctor isn’t likely to prescribe a glass of red wine to fight cancer, but the implications are truly fascinating and certainly promising. A toast! To a long life!

Scientists have determined that the saponins found in red wine are what cause the health benefits that are apparently brought about by the consumption of red wine. Andrew Waterhouse, Ph.D., Professor of Enology at the University of California at Davis and an expert in wine chemistry, says, “Saponins are a hot new food ingredient. People are just starting to pay attention to it. The Saponins’ presence in wine adds to the mounting evidence that red wine really may make a difference in lowering your cholesterol.”

Wow! Red wine as medicine! Who knew? Saponins have been found in a lot of other foods, too, like olive oil and soybeans. Desert plants like the yucca and quillaja have even higher levels of this beneficial chemical. Scientific studies have proven that saponins affect the inflammation pathways. This is really medically exciting news, since it could have implications in heart disease and cancer.

Remember that the magic (saponins) is in red wine. They aren’t in white wine in anywhere near the levels of red wine. Champagne isn’t rich in saponins, either. Red wine! The next time that you are sharing a bottle of wonderful red wine with your friends, tell all of them that you are collectively fighting high cholesterol and maybe heart disease and cancer as well.

If you had only recently purchased the wine, the fault lay with the store that sold the wine. However, if you had the bottle of wine for a period of time, the fault might have been yours alone.

Proper wine storage has everything to do with wine taste. Poor storage can be the ruin of a perfectly lovely bottle of wine — which brings me to the subject of wine racks. Most of us live in small homes without cellars of in nonlanded homes like condominiums or apartments. Wine cellars are nice, but they just are simply impossible for most of us to own. The best alternative to a wine cellar is a wine rack, and you won’t have to deplete your bank account, sink a loan, or tear down a wall to get one.

First you need to know the basics of wine storage. Wine should be stored in an area where the temperature is constantly at about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, and the bottles need to be in a horizontal or semihorizontal position so that the wine stays in contact with the cork.

There is an astounding array of wine racks to choose from. Some of these racks are made of wood, some of metal, some of pressed wood, some of wire, and some of a combination of these materials. Wine racks come in all sizes and in all shapes. There are small wine racks that accommodate about six bottles of wine, and much larger wine racks that can store a great many more bottles.

The basic steps of wine tasting are universally accepted:

1. Carefully examine the wine visually
2. Swirl the wine in the glass
3. Sniff the wine
4. Take a mouthful of the wine
5. Swirl the wine around in the mouth
6. Spit the wine out

The entire procedure looks perfectly ridiculous and, well, “snooty” to those who do not understand it. But the truth is that each step has a purpose.

Step 1: Examining the wine for clearness or clarity and examining it for sediment is best done by holding it up to a light — preferably sunlight.

Step 2: Swirling the wine in the glass releases the full aroma.

Step 3: Sniffing the wine tells the taster many things about the wine, and the aroma will change as it is exposed to the air. So the sniffing needs to be done for several seconds.

Step 4: The sip that is taken needs to be a generous amount of the wine.

Step 5: Gently rolling the wine around in the mouth allows the liquid to touch all of the different taste receptors on the tongue, because different receptors are more sensitive to nuances to taste than others.

Step 6: Spitting the wine out is only done by professional wine tasters at wine shows and events in order to keep from becoming inebriated. In a restaurant setting, with other people at the table, it is perfectly acceptable to swallow the wine.

France is famous for many wines. There are the red wines of Bordeaux or Clarets and Burgundy, and there are the white wines of Alsace. Probably the most famous of all French wines, however, is champagne! Champagne is the pinnacle of sparking white wines. Champagne has been there for all of the great and memorable events in people’s lives. We toast one another with champagne on New Year’s Eve, on birthdays, on anniversaries. Champagne and celebration are completely intertwined — you can’t have one without the other.

Champagne was invented more than 350 years ago. It isn’t a well-known fact, but actually champagne was discovered because wine spoils. Slow fermentation of the delicate and high-acid wines is interrupted by subzero temperatures during the winter months. Then, as the weather gets warmer during the summer, the yeast that were dormant during winter comes back to life and begins feeding on the sugars leftover from uncompleted fermentation. At the same time, carbon dioxide gas that was formed during fermentation has no escape, so it dissolves into the wine and creates the fizz in the bottle.

The drink, champagne, comes from the region in France, Champagne. The region is located in the most northern section of the wine-producing country of France.

Yes, the world owes France a big “thank you” for wine, and maybe a bigger “thank you” for champagne. How would we ever celebrate the big events in our lives without it?

The Napa Valley area is not a large region. It stretches for only about 20 miles. But in that small area, there is an amazing degree of climatic variations, from cool and foggy in Sonoma, to dry and hot in Calistoga.

When wine was first made in America, it was made from grapes that were native to the area and actually grew wild. The problem was that the wine made from these native grapes had a slightly animal aroma to them rather than the wonderful fruity aromas of wines made in Europe.  A man by the name of Agoston Harazthy is responsible for having cuttings of various European grape varieties into America, and he is often called the “Godfather of California Wine.”

Still, American-made wine was considered inferior to wines made in Europe until 1976. That was the year that, during a comparative blind taste-off in Paris, the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay (1973) and Stag’s Leap Cabernet (1973) came out as winners, beating all other wines from Europe; and the panel was made up entirely of Frenchmen. It was a shocking event to the wine community!

The outcome of this blind taste test swept California wines into Europe and provided them with credibility. American wines were no longer considered inferior to European wines, and some claimed that they were (and are) superior to wines made in the old world.

Grapes are grown in other states and parts of the country now, but the Napa Valley in California is and always will be the flagship of American wine.