s business leaders, entertaining clients, partners, and stakeholders become part of the job. How you show up is important and often over dinner, you’ll be having wine (unless you don’t drink wine). For the most part, it’s likely. This is why I have invited Wine Sommelier Harvey Setterfield to help you go from novice to connoisseur. Harvey has been sommelier and consultant for brands like the Ritz Carlton in Cayman and the luxurious award-winning Jade Mountain Resort in Saint Lucia.
Hanna: So I want to start with the basics. Before we get to the wine, let’s talk about wine glasses selecting the right glass. I typically buy and prefer Riedel glasses but they also have this thing; the wine glass for the Bordeaux, the one for chardonnay. Does it matter? Tell us a little bit about wine glasses to start.
Harvey: So without sounding like an estate agent and the estate agents are famous for saying is location, location, location with wine its occasion occasion occasion. So if you’re having a casual gathering, your girlfriend’s coming round for a mid-morning drink or mid-afternoon, you do not need something as fine as Riedel glass wear.
When you’re having the fine dinner to celebrate the anniversary, the birthday, birth of a child, etcetera. That’s when you’ve got the porcelain out, you’ve got the fine glassware and depending on the wine as well. A fine glass won’t make an inexpensive wine taste a lot better. It will make it taste a little better. Not a lot.
Hanna: Does the glass actually make the wine taste better. Why is that?
Harvey: Yes. Yes. The thinness. With Riedel glasses, the rim is typically very thin.
Coming to clean them. That’s the negative. The positive is how they sound, how you can swallow the wine, smell. It’s more to do with temperature. Okay. We’ve got three wines, they’re beautifully chilled cause we are here today in sunny, St. Lucia. It’s very warm. Very humid. Hanna’s got the red wines, beautifully chilled wine. They are a bit like humans. If we’re too cold, we don’t express ourselves properly. And if we’re too hot, we fatigue very quickly.
So once we’ve opened the wine, the red wine, we’ll start with that. We pour it into the glass. The beauty of the type of thinness is that the body heat goes straight through from my hand through the glass, through to the wine, and you open it up and then you get to enjoy the bouquet. So that’s where the thinness has comes in.
It’s reversed if you’re putting a white wine in there and especially with champagne or sparkling wine. When you’ve got the flutes, your body heat will go through the glass and warm up the bubbles and the champagne and the bubbles go into your system and warm champagne is likely to give you a headache.
So it’s a reverse with that (the flute is typically thicker). So the secret as well with sparkling wine and white wine is don’t pour so much. You pour less and you come back and top up more often. That’s a nice service style that you should have.
Hanna: I love that you shared that because when started promoting this interview, someone wrote in and said Hanna “I don’t drink wine because I always get a headache. And that might be because of the temperature.
Harvey: Correct. Because here we actually been naughty. We’ve filled (our champagne flute) completely full. The protocol would really be about one-third of a glass. If it’s sparkling and white wine, chill it even colder and it will come up in temperature and hopefully, it will be chilled. It shouldn’t be super cold.
I go back to what I just said, as humans, when we’re too cold, we close up and that’s the same with wine. A glass of good wine has expression, has body, has character and that’s what you’re looking for.
Hanna: Love it. So we have some wines in front of us. Can you just tell us a little bit about what is the first thing you do when you get to the shelf at a wine retailer or supermarket, and you’re trying to select the best white or red wine. What do you actually look for when you’re selecting?
Harvey: Supermarkets are probably the hardest to find one because they have a mammoth selection, they have 10 different Sauvignon Blancs and unless, you know, your geography you’ll become stuck. Geography is very important because what does the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc tastes like compared to California and Chile or Europeans?
So I go to what I said earlier, it’s the occasion. Are you just drinking the wine on its own? Are you drinking it with food? Are you having as an aperitif before you go onto something else?
So if you have a really big wine, that’s going to open up your palette it will express itself too much and then the following wine may be very dull. So what you’re looking for is you need to do a little homework and say, what is it for? Am I having it a five o’clock with my lady friends just as an aperitif before we go out to dinner, catch a movie, etcetera?
So you need to know the lightness of your wine. Sauvignon blanc which is a light, easy refreshing wine. chenin blanc, there are some beautiful chenin blanc from South Africa at the moment so that’s the “best buy” tip there. You get very good chenin blanc from Loire in France, a little pricey. You pay your money, you get what you get. I see now Washington state is beginning to grow chenin blanc.
Chardonnay can go from light to medium to full body. So yet again you have to say if I am buying a European Chardonnay I want to keep it a few years. If you are buying a younger chardonnay, get one from Australia or California.
Hanna: Going back to the shopping scenario, how else can you make a selection?
Harvey: The next important thing is, is probably food because you’re likely to have what’s called to wine and dine. Now is the food important? A lot of chefs will argue with me, no that the food is more important and I’ll argue. I say no, I’m saying is to wine and dine.
So with food and wine, I try to make it basic and it’s a balance. You’ve got to think will the wine overpower the food? For example, if I’ve got a breast of chicken that I’ve just sauteed in a frying pan or grilled, it’s quite basic. So I’m looking for a light white wine, nothing complex. If I then stuff that with garlic, then I want a wine with perhaps more flavor. So maybe an Oakey wine. Maybe I slice it open and I put a cheese in there.
Now, if I put a light cheese like a feta cheese, that’s salty, then I can go medium-high, or a light red. If I put a blue cheese in there, then I’ve got to go for a bigger wine. All the time, I’m balancing the principle ingredient with what I’m going to be drinking.
Hanna: Let’s talk about light and bold wines. What are some examples of varietals that are bolder and those that are lighter?
Harvey: Right? The classic example, the big bold ones are Syrah or Shiraz from Australia. Cabernet Sauvignon, for sure, Malbec and then one that you perhaps have not heard of, and you have to hunt down, but if you like grilling a steak or you have a man in your life who likes grilling a steak for you even better, there’s one called bonarda.
Bon is good in Spanish now there is nothing. “Good nothing”, but this is a big, bold red wine. And if you’re just having your steak or maybe a little sauce and just a glass of red wine, bonarda, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and malbec these are the really big ones.
We do have one wine here (on our table) from the Rhone region, Châteauneuf du Pape this is probably another big wine. This is one is a Crozes-Hermitage of Rhone. It can have up to five or 13 different grapes and some of those grapes can be white as well. So yet again, there’s a lot of confusion, but big, bold, Châteauneuf du Pape is one.
Hanna: Okay. Wonderful. In terms of light, more summer-mood, an afternoon chilling type of red wine.
Harvey: The classic ones. Funny you say red, but I will say rose. Everybody will go for rose.
Hanna: Do you know the hashtag #roseallday. (laughs)
Harvey: So Rose is a very classic, but we have to remember, Rose is generally made two ways. You can get white wine and red wine, mix them together, nothing wrong with that. Voila, your children (but they shouldn’t) can make this and it will make rose.
The other costly way of doing it, which is generally what they do in Champagne is they take the red grapes and they let the skin pigmentation soak in the juice and the juice takes the color from the grapes that can take 5, 8, 10 days, depending on how dark you wish to have your Rose. So that’s the two ways of making rose.
There is another beautiful rose, from Malbec. So yet again, most Rose wines have red wine characteristics. They look light, delicate and beautiful. Like my shirt today, I look very appealing, but they’re actually once they come up in temperature,
And once they come up in temperature, that again should be drank well chilled. You will smell more of red wine character than you will of a white wine character.
Lighter red wines: Beaujolais and beaujolais nouveau is the classic one.
Now this has seemed to gone out of fashion a little. It used to be in the 70s and 80s that they would make the Beaujolais wine. Within three weeks, they would have picked the grapes, bottled it and shipped it around the world. This would fly on Concorde to New York and all the restaurants used to say “I’ve got the first”… who’s got the beaujolais.
The Japanese, were crazy about beaujolais nouveau. Its very young, very fresh, almost taste like Ribena (grape juice). The other one is pinot noir, can be very easy. And you can chill them as well. Yet again, you can chill these reds. Bardolino from Italy is a classic some merlots, especially the new world merlot are generally ligther and so complex.
One basic indication is we have one here, actually hold the bottle up to the light and if you can see almost straight through it, that’s a general, not always, but a general indication that it’s a lighter, easier drinking wine.
With a Bordeaux, if we hold it up to light, we can’t see through it. So again, general rule of thumb, not always, it’s like personalities. People might be friendly to begin with, but you don’t know that dark side. Some wines are like that as well.
I’m just going to quickly go back off where you’re buying it from. Avoid supermarkets. You don’t know how long that line has been standing up and the cork needs to be moist. Ideally, the supermarket should have one on display like this (slanting at 45 degree angle) so the cork is kept moist.
Then you ask for a bottle that hopefully they’ve got to get in a storeroom that is cool. Doesn’t always happen. Nice wine stores will always have a bottle on display like this (at an angle). Then you ask for the wine you want.
So actually feel the wine and if they’re on shelves, get the one at the back.
Yes. It’s a pain in the neck. Cause you’ve got to pull a few out to get the one at the back cause that’s going to be cooler. And if you notice they use spotlights in supermarkets and the spotlight is basically cooking the front wine slowly, slowly, it’s cooking the front one.
If you look carefully at the white wines, you’ll see sometimes the color has slightly distorted. And this is telling you that the wine is perhaps going up. The other thing is you could look at the height of the wine, they call it culage. If it’s low down close to the shoulder (of the bottle), you don’t want to be buying it.
If it’s all the way up, it might be pushing the cork up you don’t want to buy it because this might be two things. If they fill it too much air could have got in, it means the wine is vinegar. So you’re looking for an average height. Look, three, four bottles, look for an average height. Then you should know that you’ve got a good wine. Should be cool. Take it from the back.
Hanna: Got it. Don’t feel weird about moving through the shelf and getting to the back to get the best one. That’s not close.
Harvey: Exactly. If you were buying a pair of shoes, you’re going to try to three on first before you get the fair. So it’s the same with the wine.
Hanna: This has been absolutely amazing Harvey. You’re incredible. Any final thoughts you’d like to share with us?
Harvey: As I, I’m going to recap a few things, look at the occasion, question the occasion, look what you want to get from the wine. Wine should be simplistic. It shouldn’t be complicated. It’s a little complicated to start with, but sympathise with us men, that’s what we find about you women. You’re complicated to begin with.
And then we try and sympathise and then we benefit. So it’s the same with the wine. Look at the occasion, how much you want to spend. Also, when you find a good wine on offer, buy as much as you lay it down, store it storage of wine in the house or the home generally don’t store it in the fridge only when you’re going to come to drink it. But in cool dark location. Not under the bed.
The wine wine does not like vibration. Or brightness. So somewhere cool, dark, without vibration, without lights.
CONNOISSEUR TIP
NEVER HOLD YOUR GLASS LIKE THIS
DO HOLD YOUR GLASS LIKE THIS
At the Base or at the stem
More insights on aerating and serving wines, to be continued…
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