Have you ever opened what was supposed to have been a very, very good wine, only to find that it tasted like vinegar? That has happened to most people at one time or another. The problem wasn’t with the wine; it started out just fine. The problem was with the wine storage.

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.

I suppose you could probably start a fairly heated argument about whether wine tasting is an art or a science among any group of wine connoisseurs. Some call wine tasting an art, while others call it pure science. Maybe wine tasting is a little of both art and science.

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.

Often when people think of wine, they think of French wine. That’s understandable. French grape growers and winemakers are considered the pioneers of premium wine production. And the truth is that almost all of the grapes grown for winemaking around the world originated from France. It is a natural thing to link wine with France.

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?