Temperature to Serve Wines
Serving wine at the correct temperature will enhance the properties of the wine. Sometimes it is difficult to achieve this precarious feat if you don’t have the time to manage the bottle. Usually we pick up a bottle of wine the day we want to open it. The bottle may be too warm or too cold when you want to have a glass.
White wine is too cold if it is coming straight from the fridge. The flavours will be closed up. Many people do not like white wine and I believe this is the reason. White wine can be very boring if it is too cold. Take the wine out of the fridge twenty minutes before you want to drink it. This will warm up the wine and open up the flavours.
Red wine should be served just below room temperature. Putting the wine in the fridge twenty minutes before you want a glass should be sufficient. Cooling the wine to 18 C will lift the acidity and add structure to the wine.
Sparkling wine should be served ice cold. Put it in a bucket of ice and open it while cold. This will shrink the bubbles so the wine doesn’t spray out when the cork pops.
Dessert wines should be just chilled down a bit. Once again, you do not want to close off the wine.
It is not always possible to be absolutely right on with wine temperatures. The key is to keep the red wines out of the fridge and the white wines in!
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

Ordering in a Restaurant
Restaurants are showing increased attention to wine lists. Offering a decent selection of wines will increase the enjoyment for the customer and keep them coming back. Here are a few things you should know about wines in a restaurant.
Wines by the glass are a terrific idea if the wine has not been open for a long time. I worked in a brew pub where the jug of house red was kept under the bar for an indefinite amount of time. I would be honest and tell people it was not good wine. Not every server would know the difference and you will find yourself with a glass of sour juice. Therefore, if you are in a dining establishment where wine is not the key beverage being served, ask the wait staff. ‘How long has the bottle been open and if it is more than one day would you open a new bottle?” I ask this in pub style places and places with limited wine selections. Wine only lasts in the bottle of a couple of days before losing its health.
Wine by the bottle is the way to go if you will be lingering over a meal. One bottle of wine provides five glasses of wine, so it is easy to go through wine with a crowd. The cost of wine in restaurants is always a bone of contention. Sometimes the mark up is outrageous. If you know how much the wine costs in the store, it sometimes rankles to pay 150% more. Usually the mark up is approximately 100% and that is fair since you are being served. Restaurants need to create revenue and wine can be a good way to do just that.
Many restaurants are offering ‘corkage’. This is when you bring you own bottle and the staff will open it, providing stemware and ice bucket if necessary. The corkage in many places will be approximately $10.00 per bottle. It will increase in higher end dining. Please call ahead to determine if the restaurant does corkage and what the cost is.
It is wonderful when restaurants have good stemware. I love a large tulip shaped glass with the wine on the side in a small carafe. The carafe shows me I have the correct amount ordered and the stemware allows me to swirl and smell the wine for increased sensory enjoyment. Those little golf ball shaped wine glasses are not very good.
If you have not finished your glass of wine, put the cork in and take it home. Put in it the back of the vehicle, preferably in the trunk, so you do not give the perception of drinking and driving.
Wine with food is how all Europeans enjoy a meal. We should also! Enjoy!
Drink responsibly. Do not drink and drive.
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

Torrae del Sale Wine Dinner
Heather Kingston ALSA Wine and Spirit Educator
ISG Certified Sommelier
When an Italian wine principal shows up in Edmonton, I will be there. Marco Olivieri from Torrae del Sale came through town recently and poured some of his wines while Creations dining room served matching food. During the four courses we sampled the well made wines Marco carefully tends in Alessandria, Italy. The Pinot Grigio was a crisp, tart reception wine pairing well with the smoked tomato flatbreads. We sat down with AMBO, Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc and crab cakes. Ambo is Latin for, ‘two of something.’ AMBO,Merlot/Cabernet Franc was served with the smoked salmon and pasta course. The wine showed just the right blend of fleshy Merlot and sturdy Cabernet Franc. The pairing was well done. The Torraie del Sale Chianti Reserva was served with a pork tenderloin and grand story telling by Mario. Just when I thought I was full, there was more! Beef tenderloin with wild boar bacon was served with Spandina Una Rosa Signature, Nero D’Avola. The silky, rich taste of Nero D’Avola went well with the beef. The wines can be found through PMA. They are all under $30.00; a great value. The dinner will be worth repeating at my house. If I could just get the Chef to cook!

Heather Kingston with Marco Oliveri of Torrae del Sale

Burgundy Event

Vendor Magazine

Heather Kingston

ISG Certified Sommelier

The Burgundy Wine Board recently held a daylong seminar and tasting in Calgary.  Francios Labet, an award winning winemaker from the region, was our host. He led us through an extensive flight of white and red wines with his massive amount of knowledge.  Burgundy is the benchmark for production of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines. These wines have been made in this small area of France since the first century.  Over time, the best grapes and growing sites were determined mostly by monks who took up the task of making wine.  Now there are 177 million bottles marketed every year.

For consumers in Canada, the challenge is understanding what is in the bottle. Traditionally the name of the grape is not on the bottle.  More producers are putting the grape variety on the back label. We know Chablis is Chardonnay and Beaujolais is the Gamay grape.  Within Burgundy, the Cote de Nuits is Pinot Noir and the Cote De Beaune, Cote Chalonnaise and Maconnais is Chardonnay.  These wines work well with food, so plan to sip Burgundy wines with dinner.

EZ Rock Wine Chat #5
Robbie Burns Day
The birthday of Scotland’s most celebrated poet, Robbie Burns, is on January 25th. Many wine boutiques and bars will be pouring fine Scotch whisky and piping in the Haggis. Are there plenty of Scots in Edmonton, or do we just like Scotch Whisky? Perhaps both! Scotch Whisky is varied, depending on the region it hails from.
Lowland Scotch has no peat and tends to be mild and flavourful, with an orange peel taste.
Highland Scotch can be made with peat added to the barley drying process. The peat can have Heather in it, so the flavors can be smoky with slight floral undertones.
Speyside Scotch generally has a very slight turn of peat. The finished product can be spicy, orange peel and caramel. Scotch from this region can be very well priced for its great quality.
Islay Scotch is a highly peated style. It is smoky and earthy; quite often a style for the seasoned aficionado. The barrels are set near the ocean, so there tends to be a salty tang to the dram that some describe as , “bandaid”.
Look for Single Malt Scotch Whisky with at least ten years of barrel aging. This is a perfect way to start enjoying Robbie Burn’s favourite beverage.
Find the whisky. Go to www.albertaliquorguide.com , click on ‘find a product’ and follow the instructions.
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

heather-kingston-wine-labels

Click on heather-kingston-wine-labels above to hear the MP3

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EZ Rock Wine Chat #5
How to open a bottle of wine.
Most corkscrews will do the job, but some are better than others. The wing style, or as I like to call it, the kitchen plunger, can often have issues. The worm, or auger, is too thick and can push bits of cork into the bottle. This does not ruin the wine, but is annoying.
The waiters corkscrew looks and operates like a pocket knife. It has a handy little knife to cut off the foil capsule. Completely remove this from the neck of the bottle for best results. Guide the worm into the cork and use the attached lever to help guide the cork out. The lever action provides easy extraction.
An Ah-So style corkscrew is one with two angled bars of metal extending from the handle. This style is very good for extracting a broken cork. You can snuggle the bars between the glass and remaining cork easily enough to ease the cork out. Barring that, there is always a pen Seanna has cleverly used to push the cork into the bottle. I believe the idea here is a glass of wine must be had no matter what the method of opening!
There are some great gadgets to open wine. Ron suggested the pressurized gas corkscrew that easily pops out the cork with a puff of neutral gas. There are large, lever corkscrews that make cork extraction a two second task with no elbow grease necessary.
For a very high end waiters corkscrew I recommend the Chateau Laguiole brand. They are approximately $200.00 each. Mine was a gift for obtaining my International Sommelier Guild diploma. I love its weight and precision. Whatever your method, enjoy the end result!
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

Reading a Wine Label
Wine labels should do the obvious – tell you what is in the bottle, but it can be tricky trying to decipher the information. There are Canadian laws about what has to be on a label. A label must declare the alcohol content of the wine, how many millilitres fluid content in the bottle and that wines contain sulphites. Sulphites are naturally occurring on grapes so even organic wines must declare this information. This chemical is an allergen for some people.
European labels do not usually list the name of the grapes on the labels. They will list the name of the estate and/or the name of the wine. An example would be Glorioso, the name of the wine and Rioja is the name of the region in Spain. The grape is Tempranillo, but not mentioned on the bottle. Some information gets complicated because there is an assumption by the wine estate that the purchaser knows how to dissect a label. The best suggestion I can give is to look up the wine estate on the internet and gather the details there. Alternatively, take a wine education class like International Sommelier Guild to really get a grip on wine knowledge.
The rest of the wine making world has caught on that we would like to know what is in the bottle. Australians were the first to put grape names on the front label. The consumer loved this because we could learn more about the wine we tasted. This has created a need for Europeans to rethink the long tradition of wine labelling and create more consumer friendly bottles. I am seeing a few more bottles with grape names and even wine making information on the back label. Happy label reading to all!
Find the wines. Go to www.albertaliquorguide.com ,click on ‘find a product’ and follow the instructions.
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

EZ Rock Wine Chat December 11th, 2009

Giving gifts of wine at Christmas.
Wines easily available and are sure crowd pleasers during the busy holiday season.
White Wines
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc – Babich, Oyster Bay, Kim Crawford.
Australian – St. Hallet,Poachers Blend and Scrubby Rise. These are blends of three different grapes.
A high end choice would be New Zealand, Rippon Riesling and can be found at Crestwood Fine Wines.
Red Wines
South Africa – The Wolftrap which is a blend Syrah, Mourvedre and Viogner.
France – Cotes du Rhone is a region in France that has very good, drink now, wines. Try Perrin Reserve or Chapoutier, Bellerche.
These high end wines can usually be found at wine boutiques around Edmonton.
Peju from Napa, California. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon.
Ben Silver wines from California. Any wine made by Ben Silver is the very best.
A gift that gives twice…
Wayne Gretzky Estate Wines. Proceeds go to disadvantaged youth in hockey.
Find the wines. Go to www.albertaliquorguide.com click on ‘find a product’ and follow the instructions.
For more information go to www.alsaweb.ca or www.hlkwine.com
Heather Kingston is an International Sommelier Guild, Certified Sommelier working in Edmonton as an educator for the ISG and the Alberta Liquor Store Association.