Can I add ice to wine and how can I avoid hangovers? John Wilson answers 50 popular questions about wine

People who love to drink wine often have questions about it. Over the past year or so, I have been answering queries which have come to me from readers, friends and Irish Times staff members. Here are responses to 50 of the most common questions posed by readers about wine.
Wines with corks should be stored on their side to stop the cork drying out. Screwcaps can be stored upright. Ideally your wine should be stored at a constant cool temperature – 10-15 cegrees. High humidity is better than somewhere very dry. Keep your wine away from sunlight which will cause it to age prematurely or oxidise. These rules apply if you are keeping wine for a lengthy period. A week or two shouldn’t matter.
No. Ninety five per cent of wine is ready to drink the day you buy it and won’t get any better with ageing. It is only the better wines from the best vintages that will improve over time.
A corked wine has a faulty cork that gives it a horrible musty smell not unlike dirty dish cloths. These days it is quite rare. If you have one, bring the bottle back to where you bought it. This is why sommeliers in a restaurant will offer you a taste before serving.
Tannins are chemical compounds that give a drying, mouth-coating, bitter taste. They are found in strong tea, coffee, dark chocolate, rhubarb and wine. The tannins in wine come mainly from the grape skins but also the pips, stems and from ageing in oak barrels. Red wines are more tannic than white wines. Tannins provide what is called structure and texture in the mouth. Tannic red wines taste better with food as they provide a counter to the richness and fattiness of meat or cheese. Tannins also allow wines to mature for longer.
Sulphur dioxide and other sulphites (E220-E228) are preservatives used in a wide variety of foods and drinks, including dried fruits, burgers, sausages, soft drinks, beer – and wine. All wine contains a small amount of sulphur dioxide, as it is a byproduct of fermentation. A small percentage of the population can have a serious reaction to sulphites. A larger section report headaches after drinking as little as one glass of wine. This is unlikely to be caused by sulphites – it may be that histamines or tannins, present in higher quantities in red wine, may be the culprit.
If drinking wine gives you a headache it may be that either sulphur (found in all wines, but more in white wine) or histamines (found in red wines) are the cause. But the most likely cause is excess alcohol. If you are on a night out, drink one glass of water for every glass of wine, try to drink wines with lower levels of alcohol, and eat plenty of food as well.
Red wine gets its colour by steeping the crushed grapes with the skins for days or weeks. Rosé is usually made by soaking the juice and skins together for just a few hours.
Orange wine doesn’t contain oranges. It is made by soaking the juice of white grapes with their skins for a long period. Essentially it is making white wine as you would a red. The wines tend to be deeper in colour and have a dry tannic finish. They can be delicious and are currently very on trend.
Yes. Most Champagne is made from a mix of red and white grapes. The colour in a grape is mainly found in the skin. So, if you crush the grape and remove the juice quickly, it will be white.
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Of course, but while it will chill the wine it will also dilute the flavours a little. I prefer the fridge for an hour or an ice bucket for a few minutes.
A spritzer can taste great on a sunny day. Or if you want to drink less alcohol.
Mulled wine is a warming red wine that has been heated and flavoured with spices and citrus peel. Some people add a little port, brandy or raisins. If you heat it too much the alcohol will evaporate.
In warmer climates grapes accumulate higher levels of sugar, which then ferments into more alcohol. As many of the traditional wine-producing regions become warmer due to climate change, their wines are becoming higher in alcohol. Cool-climate wines from regions such as Germany can be as low as 7-8 per cent abv while a Port can be as much as 22 per cent abv. Consumers seem to like full-bodied wines. They taste riper and smoother and slip down easily. A great many judges and critics score them higher too.
Serve it in a good glass, at the right temperature, and enjoy it with good friends and family.
Books have been written about this but if you remember to match bigger and richer wines with similar foods, and the same with lighter wines, you won’t go far wrong. In general, less full-favoured foods such as fish and chicken go better with fresh, acidic white wine, and bigger, more powerful reds are better with red meats or strong cheeses.
The definition varies from country to country but all organic wine (Bio in French) is made from grapes grown without the use of synthetic herbicides, fertilisers or pesticides. During winemaking, lower levels of sulphur are used.
Biodynamic wine is organic wine produced in a holistic manner, adding specific composts and treatments and working in tandem with different phases of the moon.
Natural wine, sometimes called low intervention, began in the early 1990s, when producers began making wine with no chemical herbicides or fertilisers, no added yeasts, enzymes, sugar or acid, little or no sulphur dioxide during fermentation and only very small amounts at bottling, and no fining or filtration. It was a reaction to the increasingly industrialised production of wine. Some are very good and others clearly faulty.
We like to believe that wine is a pure and unsullied drink but, like many things we consume, most wines go through a series of manipulations. A winemaker routinely adds sugar, ascorbic acid, sulphur, sweeteners, yeast nutrients, colouring, tannin and a host of other products to make a wine. Soon, under EU law, they will have to be listed on the label, or via a QR code.
The calorie count in your glass of wine depends on the amount of alcohol, any residual sugar left and the size of your glass. A 150ml glass of wine at 13 per cent alcohol will have 130-140 calories, while a larger 175ml glass with 15 per cent alcohol will have 175 calories. A standard glass of wine, which equals a unit, is 100ml, so a large glass of wine may actually equal two units of alcohol. Sweet wines may have an extra 20g of sugar per glass.
All wine needs to be stored before being bottled. Before the invention of concrete and stainless steel, wine was usually made, matured and transported in an oak barrel of some sort. Nowadays this is done to make the wine smoother and rounder. The kind of oak used can make a big difference; new oak barrels impart flavours to a wine: vanilla, grilled nuts, coffee or spiced. Fresh, young fruity wines are usually aged in stainless steel or concrete and won’t have oaky flavours.
Wine tasters and critics use these terms to try to convey a sense of how the wine tastes. Alcohol, acidity, sweetness are easy to measure but we don’t have many words in the English language to describe flavours. Unless you want to write about a wine, or talk about it to a friend, you can keep your own private wine lexicon in your head. But descriptors can be very useful.
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Producers enter their wines into competitions or send samples to wine critics hoping to win medals, trophies or gain high scores. If the wine does well, they will attach a sticker, usually gold, to let the consumer know. Some competitions are rigorous and fair, others give everyone a medal. So, they can be a help but not completely reliable. Tasting wine is a subjective process and your tastes may differ from the judges’.
You can if you wish but a bottle of wine is a gift for you, the host. Hopefully you will already have some very nice wines to serve.
Fortified wine has been strengthened and stabilised through the addition of a spirit – almost always grape brandy. Until the 1960s, wine was usually shipped in barrels and sometimes it would oxidise or go off. Alcohol acts as a preservative, so producers in parts of Spain, Portugal, France and Italy began adding brandy to prevent spoilage. It changed the taste of the wine, sometimes for the better. Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Marsala are all fortified wines.
It is all down to marketing. In the past, each wine-producing region had its own distinctive bottle shape. Bordeaux came in long, narrow bottles with pronounced shoulders and Burgundy in wider bottles with a gently sloped shoulder. These two are by far the most popular styles of bottle today, but not the only ones. Most bottles are coloured to prevent exposure to UV rays which can damage the wine. With climate change, producers are starting to use lighter bottles which use less energy to produce and are cheaper to ship.
In general, supermarkets offer fewer wines, usually mass-produced, at cheaper prices. Independent wine shops and mail-order companies offer a greater, handpicked range from smaller wine producers.
Champagne is a region in France. Only wine made in the area, from grapes grown in the area, can call itself Champagne. Champagne goes through a laborious and expensive method of production. There are plenty of other sparkling wines, such as Crémant and Cava made by a very similar process, and some are every bit as good as standard Champagne – and a lot cheaper.
Prosecco comes from the northeast corner in the Veneto region in Italy. It is almost always made by a simpler, less expensive method, with fewer bubbles that don’t last as long. Prosecco is usually richer, fruitier and sweeter. Frizzante Prosecco is bottled at a lower pressure and has fewer bubbles than Spumante Prosecco.
A medium-dry or sweet wine contains residual sugar either left over after a fermentation or added later. Some of the world’s greatest and most expensive wines are sweet. They are also called dessert wines. These are usually made by very complicated methods that produce amazing, complex wine. Most of the wine we drink is dry, less than two grammes residual sugar per litre.
Of course. And red wine with fish. You can drink whatever wine you want with whatever food you want. However, red wine is usually more full bodied and tends to go better with richer, more full-flavoured food, such as red meats and firm, aged cheeses. White wines are lighter and therefore often taste better alongside white meats, fish, vegetables and creamy cheeses.
When you shop for apples, you have the choice of Bramley’s, pink lady, Cox’s and many other varieties of apple. Each one is an apple, but every variety tastes different. It is the same with wine. We are familiar with sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon and a few others, but there are thousands of different grape varieties, and each one makes a different style of wine.
White wine usually has higher acidity and tastes fresher. Lighter, more acidic whites such as sauvignon blanc and riesling are best served around 5-10 degrees (NB a fridge is usually around 2 degrees), while more full-bodied whites like chardonnay and viognier can be a little warmer, around 10 degrees. Red is richer and more tannic so it is usually served warmer: 16-18 degrees. That is cooler than most houses so you may have to chill it for a short period or leave it outside.
No. Screwcaps are a very good way to seal a bottle of wine and to ensure it isn’t corked (see above). I find plastic corks difficult to extract and even more difficult to put back in the bottle.
Bag-in-box wines (and pouches) are convenient and climate friendly. You can help yourself to a glass or two of wine every night without risking the wine spoiling. And it is recyclable.
Once you pop the cork a wine starts to deteriorate. You can slow the process by buying a Vacu Vin pump or by putting some of the wine in an empty half-bottle. But an opened bottle, kept in the fridge, should last three to four days without a problem.
The best wine glasses are tulip-shaped, becoming a little narrower at the rim. This funnels all those lovely aromas towards your nose. A large glass allows you to swirl the wine gently around and release the aromas. It is best to only fill it a third or, at most, half full. It is traditional to have smaller glasses for white wine, but this is purely aesthetic. You can use the same wine glass for red, white and sparkling wine. Ikea, Marks & Spencer and others have good, inexpensive, dishwasher-proof glasses.
Decanting a wine speeds up the ageing process. If you have a very good young wine, decanting it will aerate the wine and soften the tannins. Very old wine, which may have sediment, should also be decanted. Lastly, wine looks good in a decanter and a decanter adds to the sense of occasion.
Sediment in wine is completely harmless and may be an indication that the wine was made with less intervention. White wines can throw little crystals. Most winemakers treat the wine to prevent this. Some red wines can develop sediment as they age. Stand the bottle up and pour gently or decant before serving.
No. Most wines are treated with fining agents to remove proteins, some of which are derived from animals. They include isinglass, which is made from fish bladders and gelatin. Non-vegan wines can be treated with casein (milk) or egg whites. However, many wines are clarified with bentonite clay and other vegan products. Some will have the vegan logo on the back label, but others don’t.
There is very little connection between price and quality. The best known names (Champagne, Chablis, Napa Valley Cabernets) are often overpriced, and wines from more obscure regions (Languedoc, Sicily, Spain outside of Rioja, Portugal, Cava) are often far better value.
No. France has some of the most famous wines regions, such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, and does make some great wines. But Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Chile, Australia and a host of other countries produce great wine too. The standard of winemaking worldwide has never been so high so don’t be afraid to experiment.
If you are looking for something new and exciting I would try Greece, Portugal or Georgia.
Restaurants typically sell their wines at three times cost price, as they do with food. It does mean that better wines can be prohibitively expensive.
If you are part of a group eating different dishes, unoaked chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, albariño, grüner veltliner all go well with salads, fish, lighter pasta dishes and roast cauliflower and root vegetables. For a red wine, go for merlot, pinot noir, Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, or a young Rioja. Or, of course, a rosé or sparkling wine, which go well with most foods.
It shouldn’t be. House wines have a bad reputation but there should be no shame attached to ordering the house wine. A good restaurant will go to some effort to source good house wines. After all, their choice of house wine says a lot about them. If they offer something awful, is their food is likely to be any better? Don’t avoid wine served by the glass or in carafes; they can be very good too.
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Wines are usually divided into three styles: light, medium and full-bodied. Light-bodied wines will have less colour, higher acidity, lower alcohol, and fewer drying tannins. Conversely, full-bodied wines have more alcohol, tannins and extract; they feel richer in your mouth. Medium-bodied are somewhere between the two. Both white and red wines can be categorised this way.
You certainly can. Indian food can go very well with wine. Really hot curries will kill the flavour of any drink, including wine, but a little heat is not a problem. Try to match full-bodied foods with similar wines and lighter dishes with lighter wines.
Creamy rich dishes such as chicken tikka go better with viognier, chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. Fresh aromatic wines such as sauvignon blanc or albariño will go better with lighter spicy, herby dishes.
Of course. Red wines tend to taste better with red meats as the proteins counter the tannins. But you should feel free to drink whatever wine you chose with your steak.
Start off with lighter, less tannic red wines with lower alcohol. These include pinot noir, Beaujolais and Valpolicella. Try them with food, preferably plain meats, firm cheeses, mushrooms and red peppers.
Many people are intimidated by wine. Sadly, it is complicated, but a little knowledge will certainly increase the pleasure you get from drinking a glass of wine. The best way to learn is to “think as you drink”. Before you open your bottle, do a bit of background research (online or in a book). Take time to swirl, sniff and taste, and try to identify the flavours and styles that you like most. It is always a good idea to make notes – just so you remember what you tasted.
If you feel like taking it a step further, there are apps, books and many classes, online and in person, that you can join. One-off tasting evenings, or one-day introductions to wine offer a good trial.
You certainly can. I would suggest you hold your own lessons at home by yourself or with a few friends. By lessons, I mean drinking wine! First, arm yourself with a book, such as Andrew Jeffords’s Wine Course or The 24-Hour Wine Expert by Jancis Robinson. But the easiest way to learn about wine is to drink it. Instead of simply sipping your wine, make a mental note or, better still, write your thoughts down in a notebook about what you taste, whether you like it – and why.