I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is right around the corner, meaning that Black Friday and Small Business Saturday is quickly approaching as well.  I know that a lot of people are waiting for some great sales to get their holiday gifts bought, we are too!  We also know that shopping at large retailers is sometimes easier than shopping small…but, if you can, please always try to shop small and local!  Here are some reasons why we should all support small…

• Small businesses make up 48% of the United States jobs…for real…I was shocked at that stat but google doesn’t lie ????
• We give back to the community. Taxes, Charities, Donations…it all goes back to you!
• Better customer experience! Looking to talk to someone…we offer a good customer experience with a hands-on approach
• Small businesses can provide product diversity…if we don’t have something in the store, we can look into ordering it for you
• It will make you feel good that you gave back to us small folk!

Don’t just shop small on Small Business Saturday but do it year-round!  Your neighbors and the local economy will thank you!  Also…whether you are shopping at our store or others, it never hurts to ask for a price match if you found the item cheaper elsewhere…we will always try to match it!

Keep an eye out on Instagram @wine_hardware for daily deals leading up to Small Business Saturday…we will post them on our stories and we will let you know about the Big Small Business Saturday Sales too!

Home is Where the Wine is!

If hosting, remember that you always start with the lightest and progress to the heaviest.  Whites:  Sparkling, Roses, light whites and full-bodied whites.  Reds:  Light to medium bodied to full bodied and followed by a dessert wine.

Before we start, let me tell you about two common mistakes that I see people do while wine tasting… 

• Should you rinse your glass with water in between tasting….NO…never add water to your glass in between tastings! This is a very common mistake, and will dilute your wine, can leave a chlorine taste or aroma and can even change the alcohol content.
• Does it matter how you hold your wine glass? YES…you should never hold the glass by the bowl.  Always hold by the stem.  When you’re pouring, it should already be at the perfect temp so you don’t want to warm it up anymore…not to mention the ugly fingerprints it can leave ????

Here are the steps to take that will truly make you look like a Pro…

• Look: Notice the color of the wine. Hold the glass up to the light (if you can).  Why you ask?  This can give you the first look at a light, medium, full body wine or it can help you gauge the age of the wine.  An older wine will have a more brick-red color rather than a younger wine which is more burgundy
• Swirl: swirl the wine as much as you want…it is a human aerator! You will probably see tears or legs develop which indicates the presence of alcohol.
• Smell: this can be the most intimidating part as there are hundreds of different aromas that can be found.  You can become more adept at identifying the aromas the more you do it…I promise…so keep trying!  Wine Folly has a great article here around the Science of Aromas.  Some types to look for are of course fruit, but also herbs, earthiness (like soil), or different smells from the type of oak it was aged in.
• Sip: the correct way to sip is to swish it around in your mouth a bit prior to swallowing.  Hopefully here you can nail down the flavor profile
• Spit/Swallow: I actually don’t think I have ever spit out a wine but if you are tasting a lot, and don’t want to get too drunk, spitting may be the way to go!  It is not looked down upon.  You are there to enjoy the wine and if this is part of your routine, there is nothing wrong with that.

Home is where the wine is!

• Begin the Design. The Fun Part!  Based on your consultation, you will get option(s) back on potential designs and then you can start building.
• Prep your Space. You will need an HVAC tech for the cooling unit and a contractor for the build (we have preferred installers, or you can go with your own)
  • Wall and Ceiling Covering for Cellar – You need a vapor barrier on the warm side of the wall, proper insulation (minimum R20 in the walls and minimum R30 in the ceiling), purple board for the sheetrock and your finishing paint.
  • Wine Cellar Doors – you need a 100% airtight door seal. If you are going to have glass, it should be double or triple paned. You don’t want your cooling unit working overtime because your door isn’t airtight or not double paned.
  • Flooring – flooring is the easy part in terms of what will work…just go with what you like best, as long as it isn’t carpet! Most of our clients use Stone, Marble, Tile or Slate.
  • Lighting – a vital part of cellar décor and people are getting really creative these days with color LED lights, floor lights and so on…Just keep in mind that low lights are important, and a dimmer switch adds a nice feature. I love to see the end results of lighting.
• Enjoy!!!

They aren’t just for the obvious beauty that a rosebush can add to any setting, they actually serve a purpose to the winemaker.  Roses are planted at the end of grape rows as an early warning system for the winegrower. Because they are fragrant flowers, they attract insects such as aphids before they can make their way to the vines.  This way the winemaker or vineyard manager will know what insects are in the vineyard that could potentially threaten their grapes. They also attract beneficial insects that will prey on the undesirable insects.

It can also serve as an early warning sign of mildew.  If the rosebush has mildew, it will let the vineyard manager know that the vines may be susceptible to mildew as well.  It isn’t the same strain of mildew but if the conditions can cause it on the rose bush, it will also be good conditions for downy mildew on vines.

I also read that an ancient tradition of rose bushes at the end of a row served the purpose of pricking or poking the horses or oxen to turn properly at the end of the row…if they didn’t want to get pricked, they wouldn’t be able to take the shortcut of cutting a corner…they had to go all the way around.

Home is Where the Wine is!

Remember to Call us anytime for a Free Consultation on any Custom Wine Cellar!

First, ensure you have all the necessities

• A drink while making the platter…I went with a skinny margarita for this one! ????
• Different types of cheeses. We do mostly cow with 1 goat and 1 sheep.  All of our cheeses come from Costco or Trader Joe’s…they have the best options at good prices!
• Different types of crackers. I always do a long cracker, a gluten free option and a cracker with figs.  Again, Trader Joe’s or Costco
• Different colors. I like to get my colors from foliage, grapes or dried fruit and even the crackers
• A quince paste, honey or jam
• A nut or olive of some sort (I usually go for the Trader Joe’s Marcona Almonds and Calvestrano Olives)
• If you are adding meat, aka, making a charcuterie, be sure to have different forms of meats. I like Prosciutto, Salami and a Soppressata
• The perfect cheese board…I have two favorites, but they are both made out of wine barrel staves (Linked in Blog Post, link in Bio)
• The perfect knife set. The one I used is by Ray Dunn.  They sell it online at major retailers but if you can make it to HomeGoods, it is half the price…they just don’t have it online.

Second, I like to lay it out prior to putting it on the cheese board…I need to visualize it a couple different ways before committing. I am like this with decor too…Mike gets so annoyed with me because I leave tags on everything…I mean, until I am ready to fully commit to it in that spot and I love it so much I don’t want to return it! Lol

Lastly, take all the wrappers off and start building!  I promise that with the variety of cheeses and meats, beautiful colors, flowers and extras…your cheese platter will not disappoint, and you will impress all your guests!

Home Is Where The Wine Is!

Wine Stave Cheese Board

Wine Stave Cheese Board 2

Here are the steps you need to know/think of when trying to figure out how much wine you will need…

• How to do basic math
• Will you offer a themed cocktail to start the night off?
• Know your guests preference
• How long will the party last?

First things first, there are 4 glasses in a bottle of wine…not five!  Five is a restaurant pour that is infuriatingly annoying, especially when you’re paying an average of $16 a glass (San Francisco prices).  If you use the math of 5 glasses per bottle, you will never have enough for your guests…especially if they are helping themselves to the pour!

Second, is your party going to start with cocktails?  We usually have a themed cocktail that I can make ahead.  Something like a Spicy Paloma or Sangria to start the party, depending on what you are serving of course.

Third, perhaps one or two guests only drink beer and one or two other guests are on a Paleo diet and can only drink clear liquids.   Either way, know your guests…especially if it is an intimate occasion. 

Fourth, is this just apps and dinner or will there be a dance party to the end night?  Ours always ends with a dance party…especially if my family is around. Haha.

After knowing all that, we always suggest to our clients, a minimum of 1 bottle per wine drinking guest.  We usually err on the side of 6 glasses per guest or a bottle and a half…that late night dance party will get us every time.  If you have leftovers, great, drink it on Tuesday, after you’ve recovered…lol.  But, knowing you didn’t run out and your guests didn’t go thirsty is what is important

Also, don’t forget to have fun party tricks.  A good Decanter, Champagne Sabre or a Menagerie Aerator are all fun ones!  Links to these at bottom of Blog post.

Home is Where the Wine is!

Menu Wine Breather Decantor

Always a good call to decant your wine at any dinnner party!

Menagerie Elephant Aerator

Always a fun conversation starter!

Champagne Saber

The best party trick of all. Be careful to have lots of Champagne though…everyoone will want to try it!

Neon Wine Glass Markers

Let people write their own name or draw a picture on the wine glass!

This can be a personal choice but our opinion is that while shape does matter, quality is so much more important!  Most people don’t have room to store upwards of 18 different shaped glasses just to support their broad palette of loving all that is wine!  Shape can make a difference, and in 2015 Japanese researchers reported in Chemistry World, that the concentration distribution of alcohol leaving a glass found that both temperature and shape impacted the taste.  So…it is proven and we do believe you should have a glass for your Whites, Sparkling, Bordeaux, and Pinot’s but going any deeper than that isn’t necessary…unless you have unlimited storage and cash! ????

All that said, the quality of your glass can DEFINITELY affect the taste of your wine.  So much so that Mike and I have gone to the extent of bringing in our own wine glasses to our favorite restaurant when we brought in a special bottle of 2007 Gemstone Cabernet Sauvignon to share on our anniversary.  We have been going to this restaurant for years so knew they would pour our bottle into those super thick rimmed glasses that could basically drop on a floor and bounce up…you know the ones I’m talking about! 

Now, a quality (probably expensive) glass will not change how two buck chuck tastes but a terrible glass will detour the taste and appreciation of a very nice bottle of wine.   You won’t get those fruits and aromas and experience that tasting a wine for the first time can bring.

Zalto glasses are definitely our preferred choice but do the test yourself if you can…even compare a mason jar to your wine glass.  The choice is yours…shape or quality…or both!?  We go with quality…and maybe shape…I mean, I’m not going to drink a Sauvignon Blanc in my Bordeaux Glass…we aren’t Neanderthals ????!!

Here are some of our favorite glasses

High End – Zalto Universal Glass

Medium of the road – Riedel Vinum Extreme Pinot Noir (2 pk)

Medium of the road – Riedel Veritas Cabernet/Merlot (2 pk)

Budget Friendly – Nachtman Vivendi (4 Pk)

Riedel Sister glass line

Home is Where the Wine is!

• Twist off cap is equivalent to drinking a basic wine
• Synthetic corks, polyethylene, are cheap wines (but were at one point meant to change how every bottle of wine was corked)
• Real Cork is classic and the best form to keep oxygen out, a typical cork will let in about one milligram of oxygen per year, but 1-2% of corks will taint some of the best wines!
  • I have also heard that cork is becoming an endangered source, but after much research, this may have been a scare at one time, but doesn’t seem to be a concern anymore.

I picked out three bottles that we had in our cellar, one with real cork, one synthetic and one twist off.  My first observation is that my “beliefs”, as bullet-ed above are SO wrong.  The Petroni Vineyards Brunello, the most expensive at around $60 a bottle, had the Synthetic Cork!!  The Riviera Pinot Noir from Sonoma County, around $20 per bottle had the twist off and I picked a Tamayo Red Wine from Contra Costa County, also around $20, that had the real cork.  

In the 70’s more than half of Australian bottled wine went bad due to corking and they blamed the Portuguese and Spanish cork suppliers.  This is when alternative methods of corking really took off, such as the “Stelvin” cap aka twist-off.  These “bad corks” actually pushed a lot of Australian wines to exclusively use twist-offs…High End, Medium of the Road and budget wines.

I have been reading a lot on this and there are pros and cons to all three and I can’t seem to find an answer as to which one is best.  The Winemaker has to take a lot of elements into consideration when picking what they will put in the neck of the bottle…from science, to environmental factors, performance, is it biodegradable and of course cost! 

For example, Synthetic corks are predictable, and winemakers can take that into consideration when bottling, which actually makes them appealing.  As mentioned above as to what happened in Australia, a bad experience can change an entire regions perspective on how to cork.

Some White wines actually thrive with the twist-off cap, I read one article by Robert Joseph where he had an “encounter with a brilliantly youthful 25- year-old screwcap-sealed Pewsey Vale, Eden Valley Riesling which proved that white wine, at least, could age perfectly well without a cork”

Again, there are pros and cons to all…at the end of the day, Don’t let the cork give you a false positive or false negative on the quality…If I would have followed my own logic, I never would have tasted the yummy Petroni Brunello! 

If the wine tastes good to you, who cares what is in the neck of the bottle…just enjoy it!

Home Is where the wine is!

Here are the definitions of each from dictionary.com

• de·cant /dəˈkant/ – verb – gerund or present participle: decanting – gradually pour (liquid, typically wine or a solution) from one container into another, especially without disturbing the sediment.
• aer·ate /ˈerāt/ – verb – introduce air into (a material).

These definitions are funny to me because that is how I think of Decanting vs. Aerating and why it can be a topic of conversation in our house.  Which one is better?  In my eyes you decant older European wines to open them up and get rid of the sediment.  You aerate newer American style wines to quickly oxidize and open the flavors.

At the end of the day, they both serve a similar purpose which is to expose wine to air.  Wine has 100’s of different compounds but there are three that you really do want to allow aeration into, Sulfites (added to prevent oxidation), Sulfides (natural but have a rotten smell), and Ethanol. 

Suggestions of When to Decant:

• If you have the time
• An older wine that needs the sediment removed
• If you will be consuming a BIG Bordeaux or Napa Valley Cab that may require a couple hours of decanting to fully open up and unlock the tannins
• Hosting an event, dinner party and want to impress family/friends

Suggestions of When to Aerate:

• If you have a younger wine and can’t wait to get that first sip into your mouth (me 99% of the time)
• Casual time at home
• Wanting to show off those cool Menagerie Aerators and what your newest piece to the collection is (again, me 99% of the time)

If you don’t have time or don’t have a fancy decanter or an aerator, don’t fret…just swirl! ???? You know when you go wine tasting and you see tasters swirling their wine, this is an organic way of aerating the wine. 

Home is where the wine is!

Now, I don’t know about you guys, but going wine tasting throughout the summer, and of course into fall, is one of our favorite pastimes.  With and without the kiddos!   In the Bay area, temperatures during these months are an average of 80° (anywhere from 100° to 65°) and you need to make sure you are prepared to store your wine in those hot cars, limos, party buses etc.

Every time we taste, we end up buying way more wine than was initially intended…some may call it a problem, my husband calls it research .  And of course, the more we drink, the more we buy…oops!

But, where do you store all this wine while you are driving around from winery to lunch to winery, to winery, to winery, in the heat?  Research shows that if it is more than 80° outside, your car can quickly reach more than 150°, aka, your new pricey wine should not be sitting in that hot car! Your goal is to make sure the newly purchased wine doesn’t reach over 80° while you are galivanting around wine country.  Once that happens, the fruit flavors begin to suffer and the acid tastes become more pronounced, meaning the wine got cooked!  Your corks can also push out and/or there can be a residue on the cork as a sign of heat damage.  Any of these outcomes could mean your wine is aging prematurely and ultimately may be undrinkable.

Solution:

• We ALWAYS bring enough cooler bags to store at least 15 bottles, because hey, you never know what may happen!  Be sure to put ice packets in the cooler bags so they remain cool and if you have access to something like a Yeti, that is what we would recommend. Click on link above to purchase
• Bring your wine into the next winery with you.  They will understand and no one will care!
• Have the winery ship it to you!  You will most likely need to pay for shipping but they will package it correctly and only ship it when and if the temperature outside will not harm your wine while in transit.

Buying wine is expensive, emotional, enjoyable and can bring back memories from years prior when you pop that perfectly aged bottle.   So, why would you go through all that joy of tasting and purchasing and then risk cooking your wine by leaving it in a hot trunk?  Don’t do it. 

Click on pics to the left to link to our YETI shop.

Home is Where the Wine is!