Article Written By: James Mitchell21
With the Met Office forecasting a scorcher this summer, more BBQs are being pulled out and getting cleaned up prepared for a season of out of doors entertaining. But it is not only the food we want to think about to supply the ideal al fresco dining experience. What we drink can have a big result on how well the food and the evening in total is received. The difficulty we are facing is knowing the best wine to buy to compliment these occasions, and where we will find it at the best cost. Below are some top tips on the wines to buy to help with your summer entertaining.
Red wines: When it comes to barbeque-wine pairing, red wines are the simplest. For steak lovers try a great Cabernet Sauvignon that may bring out the flavours of the beef. For chickens or pork a Sangiovese will do you well. And for those that like you food covered in bbq sauce the wine to buy is a Chianti or a Zinfandel. If you need a great all rounder you can't fail with a Merlot, the ideal fit for most things; steak, birds or pork and the mandatory bangers and burgers.
White wines: Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon are great wines to buy for salad munchers and fish lovers, being the ideal partner for griddled veg and seafood. For red beef lovers who fancy a hint of white with their meal, try a Pinot Gris or Pinot Blanc. And again for BBQ sauce lovers you cannot beat a Riesling.
So when you have identified which wine to buy to help further tease the tastes of your visitors, there are some golden rules you need to follow to make certain you get the best bottles and serve them at their best. Beginning with cost. The question 'If I spend two times as much, does the wine I buy be twice as good?' is an often asked. Typically if you try to spend under a tenner you may find that quality does increase with price - so aandnbsp; 6 bottle of wine may be twice as good as aandnbsp; 3 bottle and aandnbsp; 12 bottle twice as good as aandnbsp; 6 one. But over and above this level the price to sample proportion becomes more subjective. What about age and years, how will the year impact the flavour of the wine you buy? As a guide, most white wines ( especially cheap bottles ) are best drunk as young as practicable - actually inside a year or 2 of the vintage. Their appeal is in their freshness and fruitiness. Watch out though for some exceptions like full bodied whites including Burgundies and other giant Chardonnays. Fine Rieslings also usually improve with age. For reds, do not be fooled into following the parable that red wines should be kept for ages. Most red wines these days are perfect for drinking quite shortly after the vintage. The Australians are gurus of this rounded, fruit-driven style. But the French don't follow too far behind and produce some great early-drinking reds, as do the more progressive estates of Spain and Italy. It is the older generation of red wines, the ones which contain more tannin - the stuff that acts as the wine's natural preservative, which you may want to leave to linger for some time. Giant conventional reds can have tons of tannin and must be stored for many years before they are soft enough to drink. And what about the perfect temperature to store the wine you buy? Well everyone knows that nothing ruins a wine more than serving it at the incorrect temperature. Crisp dry whites, rosandeacute;, sweet and sparkling wines need at least an hour in the refrigerator. Less chilling however permits richer whites to show off their complexity so select about half an hour at most for chilling. Heavy reds served too cold will taste horribly tannic so serve at 70 degrees but light reds can get benefits from being gently chilled about twenty mins in the cooler.
James Mitchell is author of this article on Buy wine. To find great tasting wines to complete the perfect summers evening why not see what Naked Wines has to offer? Buy wine online here.
This Article Has Been Published on Sat, 30 May 2009 and Read 438 Times