Drinking needn’t be a yobbish pursuit and if you want a dapper chap to act as your benchmark for your drinking endeavours – think Bertie Wooster. This stylish gentleman wouldn’t be seen dead ‘strawpedoing’ a WKD or downing pints of Carling and nor should you if you have pretensions of being a man of some sartorial standing.
Wine is the drink of a real gentleman and if you want yourself to be seen in this light, you’ll stand yourself in good stead by learning how to drink your wine like good old Bertie Wooster.
Well, first things first, you should dress the part and that will entail purchasing your Saville Row suit and undergoing a suitably foppish makeover (including a waifish haircut like the good man himself).
Once you’ve got the sartorial elements out of the way, you can turn your attentions to the wine and how you should be drinking it to both impress your fellow gentleman and to woo any ladyfolk who may be in attendance.
So, if you’re planning to make a play for the hoi-polloi set, you’ll need to know some wine drinking etiquette basics such as these:
Know When to Uncork your Wine:
Whilst you may assume that you should uncork your wine when you’re ready to pour your wine, this isn’t actually the case (Bertie, or perhaps more accurately, Jeeves) would know this. Generally speaking, you should pop your cork on red wines around one hour before you plan to drink it (which will give you plenty of time to retire to your drawing room and ruminate your manly thoughts).
So far as white wines are concerned, these don’t breathe as well as reds so you should pop this one just before you plan to drink it. A simple mantra for remembering this could be ‘if it’s red, open it an hour before, if it’s white, open it now’ – catchy, no?
Find the Right Temperature:
Unless it’s Christmas (AKA mulled wine season), you definitely don’t want to be serving your wine warm because this will call your dapper chap status into question. In order to properly care for your wine, you should regard it as a living thing (like a Tamogotchi) and if you want it to prosper, you need to ensure you store it properly – most notably, in terms of the temperature at which you store it. A quick crib sheet for you to adhere to when thinking of wine temperatures should be store your white wines at between 9-14°C and the reds at between 13-20°C.
How to Pour your Wine:
Wine can be split into two distinct camps – those wines that live the high-life with bubbles and those which keep it real with a dearth of our bubbles. But any dapper gentleman worth his salt will know that whether a wine has bubbles or not will have a bearing on how you should be pouring your tipple. If you’re pouring a ‘bubbly’ then you should pour it down the side of the wine glass (the inside, I hasten to add) as this will protect the bubbles (they’re not the hardiest sort). Conversely, if you’re pouring a flat wine, you should pour it straight down the center of the glass which allows the aroma of the wine to work its way to your nostrils.
So, the next time you’re heading to your local wine merchants, you should have a bit of additional knowledge that will stand you in good stead. Bertie Wooster may well be (in fact he is) a fictional character but there is no denying that he is certainly a sophisticated fellow and one whose suit you can follow when it comes to drinking wine (although we know that Jeeves was the brains of the operation).
