Ace that dinner party with this wine knowledge...

So, you have been given the task of hosting a dinner party with some friends of yours and you would like to make a good impression. The problem? Your friends are total wine aficionados or cork dorks, while everything you know about wine could fit inside a thimble.

In summer, you could probably get away with knowing that a Sauvignon Blanc should do the trick with a nice fish dish, but this is different – you are planning the dinner and need to know a little more than white wine with fish, and so on...

With some help from Arniston Bay, you'll enjoy your evening and perhaps even teach your friends a thing or two.

Right, so lets quickly cover a few basics and then we can show you how to appear like you know what you are talking about.

What You Will Need:

A couple of reasonably priced bottles of great wine. Try a few different varietals, this will give you a good idea of which wines you like and which wines you don’t like: a Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinotage, Shiraz and a Cabernet Sauvignon. It would also be worth getting a great bottle of sparkling Rosé as this will go with most aperitifs and will stand out.

Decide on a menu (rule of thumb: meat = red wines and fish = white wines) the above selection will cover you for both.

Know Your Stemware There are four main different types: white wine glasses, red wine glasses, champagne flute and dessert wine.

Get a Corkscrew Luckily though some great wines now come as screw caps.

Get a White Tablecloth This will make the colours of the wines really stand out. Just remember if you spill any red, have some white wine and salt handy to remove the stain.

Insider Knowledge

Understand why wine is such a big deal. That’s what makes it different from all that other stuff you drink – hard liquor and beer – whose appeal and price are based on tasting the same this year as they did last.

Wine varies so much from year to year because wine grapes are very sensitive to climate – temperature, soil, rainfall, surrounding vegetation. A wine made from grapes that were grown in a dry season will taste differently than one produced during a wet one.

What really gets wine enthusiasts excited is, when you drink a good wine, you are experiencing a unique product of the natural environment at a given moment in time, brought out by the winemaker’s art. "Earth in a glass", as the saying goes.

Learn the Technical Talk

Colour isn’t everything, so if your knowledge of wine doesn’t exceed the fact that you know red and white wines are different because of their colour, continue to read.

There are two basic types of wine grape: red and white. Each typically have the same colour pulp; it’s the skins that factor most heavily in determining a wine’s colour.

Obviously, white wines are produced from white grapes and red wines from red grapes. But you can make a pink, blush, or Rosé wine by removing the skins from the juice before they have a chance to stain the wine fully red. Similarly, you can produce a perfectly “white” sparkling wine or champagne from red grapes, such as Pinot Noir, by pulling the skins out immediately.

Grasp the Grapes

In South Africa, wines are traditionally marketed by varietal, which is simply a wine made from a given variety of grape. It’s an easy, though not always accurate, way to classify a wine and predict its taste.

In France and Italy, it’s different. The French believe that where a wine’s grapes are grown is just as important, if not more important, than the kind of grapes used. That’s why French wines are labelled according to region, such as Burgundy or Bordeaux, Don’t assume you’re going to learn about every possible varietal on the market – start with the most popular in South Africa:

Red Wines Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinotage and Shiraz.
White Wines Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc.

Get the Pairing Right

Having your snobby friends over for dinner doesn’t mean you need to blow R400 on a couple bottles of wine. Here’s a smart tactic that will allow you, yes, you, wine ignoramus to play sommelier come suppertime.

Start with a Sparkle. Offer each of your guests a flute of chilled sparkling Rosé wine. When you open sparkling wine, don’t fire the cork at the ceiling and let the bubbly gush out like you just struck oil. For one thing, this lets a lot of the fizz escape. For another, it’s something people really only do in movies. Wrap the top of the bottle in a napkin and gently pull the cork out while turning the bottle. All you should hear is a little spoof when the cork comes free.

Move on to white. Serve a light dish, such as salad or seafood starter, as your first course with your first still wine, which should probably be a white.

Shift to red. As you move to the meat dishes, it’ll be time to break out the red wines, start with a more delicate red, such as a Cabernet Sauvignon, and move on to a heavier one, such as a Shiraz.

Show Your Wine Experience

Test the wines before your big dinner party. Pour out a little into wine into each glass – they shouldn’t be any more than one-third full, otherwise you could spill the wine when you swirl. Note your impressions of each of the following:

Look Hold your glass up to the light. What colour is the wine? Is it light red, deep purple, or somewhere in the middle? Is there some brown mixed in? Now swirl the wine a bit in the glass. Does it leave thick or thin streaks on the inside of the glass? Those streaks are the described “legs”; thicker legs mean the wine has more alcohol.

Smell Tilt the glass, stick your nose in it as far as you can without getting wet, and take a deep breath. What does the wine smell like? Aromas that typically occur in wines include: Fruit, herbs, veggies, grass, fresh dirt, flowers, smoke and chocolate

Taste Take a sip of the wine and swirl it around in your mouth a bit (don’t gargle). What does it taste like? You’ll notice that many of the aromas that you found while sniffing the wine are repeated as flavors when you taste it. But you’ll also discover these basic qualities:

For more wine terms click here.