You can spend a lifetime learning about wine and still not know it all. Buying, enjoying and storing wine is nuanced but a few tweaks can help even the most amateur imbiber get more out of every bottle.
To gather tips, pitfalls to avoid and to separate few wine myths from reality, I spoke with Jerry Chandler, a wine consultant, expert and the general manager of The Bohemian Wine Bar in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Chandler revealed five mistakes that even seasoned wine drinkers make — from serving at the wrong temperature to aggressive cork removal — and explained how avoiding them can elevate the experience.
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1. Drinking it at the wrong temperature
Storing your wine properly has an outsized effect on how well it will age.
We tend to drink white wine straight out of the refrigerator and red wine right off the counter, but both could benefit from coming a little more toward the center for an ideal serving temperature. Neither ice-cold white wine nor too-warm red wine can effectively express their aromatic compounds. The flavors of white wine are more dynamic in the 40s or 50s (Fahrenheit, that is) and red wines in the 50s or 60s.
Pro tip: Put red wine in the fridge briefly before serving
To achieve this, “it’s OK to put red wine in the fridge for 10 or 15 minutes, just to get it a little bit cooler,” Chandler says. Similarly, you can remove your white wine from the fridge 15 to 20 minutes before you intend to serve it, or just chill a room temperature bottle of white in a bucket of ice water for that same amount of time. “That’s going to give you that temperature that’s going to be in the 40s,” he says, “but it’s not going to be too cold.”
2. Storing it improperly
Wine should be kept somewhere dry, cool and away from direct sunlight.
You don’t have to have a wine cellar or wine collection to heed a few common sense practices when storing wine. Most wine in the US is consumed within a few hours of purchase, in which case not a lot can go wrong, but even if you’re keeping a bottle for a couple of days to save for a special occasion, “make sure you’re being mindful,” Chandler says, to ensure that whatever wine you have doesn’t become a waste of money due to improper handling.
Light, heat and motion can affect even inexpensive bottles. “You don’t ever want to leave wine where the temperatures will constantly fluctuate,” Chandler says, which can be anywhere that gets direct sunlight at any part of the day. You also don’t want to leave it somewhere where it is constantly going to be moving,” he says, which can disrupt any sediment and affect its flavor.
Leaving a bottle of wine in a vehicle, for example, can expose it to extreme temperatures both high and low as well as subject it to excessive movement. The best way to store wine for more than a few hours is on its side in a consistently cool place that doesn’t receive direct sunlight.
3. Popping sparkling wine like an amateur
Leave the Champagne spraying to Nascar drivers and Super Bowl winners.
The pop of a bottle of Champagne or sparkling wine can be festive, but it greatly reduces the carbonation in the bottle and can be downright dangerous. Most sparkling wines are topped with a mushroom-shaped cork, plus a metal cage, which keeps the cork in place since the bottle’s contents are pressurized.
That cage has another purpose: It can also help you open the bottle safely. It should be unscrewed and loosened but left in place to help you remove the cork. “You use the sides of the cage to gently grip and twist. That’s going to allow some of the pressure to slowly alleviate from the bottle,” Chandler says. This releases the cork in a slower and more controlled fashion and preserves more of the carbon dioxide responsible for the bubbles.
“I watch so many people just unscrew the cage and then take the cage off, and I always feel my heart skip a beat because you are allowing that cork to do anything it wishes, including blasting off in any direction, full speed,” Chandler says. “Never remove that cage unless you’re removing it with the cork.”
4. Buying wine based on packaging
If you turn your nose up at wine with a screw top, you’re going to miss out on a few excellent budget-friendly bottles.
There may have been a time when the heaviness of the bottle or the type of closure used were guarantees of a wine’s quality, but that is no longer the case. Along with other types of alcoholic beverages, wine has evolved to meet the moment, and matters of sustainability as well as improvements in technology have created more diverse packaging options.
“Science has come a long way in preserving wine, especially over the past 20 years,” Chandler says, but some people still hold prejudices about wine sealed with a screw top. (“Stelvin closure” to wine pros.) “You’re not going to want to lay down a bottle for 20 years that has a screw top,” he says, “but for wines that you’re going to drink soon, a screw top is perfectly fine.”
Read more: Ask the Expert: How to Find a Great Wine on a Budget
Many wine producers are actually decreasing their bottle weight as they’ve rolled out sustainability initiatives, and some major wine reviewers are refusing to rate wines whose bottles are above a certain weight. Both canned wine and boxed wine are also increasing in quality as those packages are also becoming championed with sustainability measures. Basically, wine has entered its “don’t judge it by its cover” era.
5. Never leaving your comfort zone
Adventurous wine drinkers have more fun.
There are literally thousands of wine grape varieties, not to mention wine producers, yet most of us tend to drink the same few bottles on repeat. Because of the way wine is distributed in the US, it’s difficult to find producers whose wines are consistently available from store to store. Or to find a bottle you loved at a restaurant on your local retail shelves. A lot of us tend to drink the same mass-produced brands and familiar grapes because we can always find them.
This too, is a mistake, in terms of getting the best bang for your buck, knowing what’s actually in your bottle and expanding your palate. “With mass-produced wines, I always think about what else is in there to keep them at that same consistent flavor profile,” Chandler says. (Hint: it’s more than just grapes.) Anything that has the kind of marketing budget for major advertising tends to represent wine made in conference rooms rather than in vineyards.
It can be understandably hard to branch out. “When I first started learning wine, I only wanted to drink certain things because I didn’t want to spend the money and risk it,” Chandler says. Rather than focus on a few bottles, try to understand the flavor profiles you like and be willing to engage with wine pros in retail or restaurant settings that can use your preferences to introduce you to new things. “Wine is an endless experience,” he says, “and we want people to be as excited to try this thing for the first time the way we were.”
