• Develop a relationship with your wines
• Don’t be a “label drinker”
• How to do a proper tasting at home/dinner/party
• Opening a King Frosch bottle
• Storing wine
• Try a variety of wines
• Try to use the right glass
• You don’t have to drink the whole bottle
Try to use the right glass
I confess that I’ve been known to drink wine out of whatever glass or cup that is handy, but you should not underestimate the effect of a proper wine glass on the taste of your wine. You will be amazed in the differences in taste when you sample the same wine from different glasses.
There are glass companies out there that spend a lot of money marketing the differences in wine glasses and rightly so, because the right glass in the right shape can make or break the taste of a good wine. This is especially true with sparkling wines-there are actually glasses designed to improve speed of the bubbles!
Don’t be a “label drinker”
What is a label drinker? “Label drinkers” are people who will only buy a wine that has been awarded a certain number of points by a certain publication or wine expert. This is not a bad place to start when choosing a wine, but in the end, those points were awarded by someone who has completely different taste buds and preferences than you do, and oftentimes the wine companies use points awarded to a wine from a particular year to a wine made with grapes grown in a different year.
Do not rely totally on somebody else’s taste or point system unless you are a fan of this person or preference. Follow somebodies suggestion and try it out like food and judge for yourself. This way you are in control what you like. You will see its fun. Your instincts are correct, follow your own instincts of loving a wine or not. If you like sweet wines or
medium bodied reds and a big bold red wine snob tells you that you know nothing, appreciate the difference and let him/her be. Do not allow a ‘label drinker’ or other expert spoil your fun.
How to do a proper tasting at home/dinner/party
Wine Tasting Tip
Always start your flight or your evening with a King Frosch Sparkling Wine! King Frosch Sparklings (dry or sweet) makes a wonderful start to any wine tasting or evening. That cleanses the palette and prepares for a great evening, plus sparkling is always synonym with celebration. Sparkling wines are perfect before trying a flight of white or red wines, dry, semi-dry or fruity.
Follow the sequence from white to red, from dry to sweet and pick your wine like you would pick a tie for a shirt. If the food has some green apple and cheese, find #6 dry Riesling with green apple taste, if you food is light (fish) find a light white/red King Frosch wine like #605 dry mild Riesling, or #9 Pinot Blanc or #910 Sauvignon Blanc.
A hearty meal, like steak asks for #2 dry Dornfelder, #520 Syrah, #470 Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, #560 Cab Sav, or #510 Merlot reserve!
A Thanksgiving dinner with sweet sauces asks for the #612 semi-Sweet Gewürztraminer or our #110-S/ 110-A Kerner!
A salad with cranberries or Cesar salad goes well with our #7 semi-dry Riesling.
Follow up with dessert. Either pour any of our Auslese (Noble Sweet) Wines in a small glass (i.e. a 2 ounce pour). One 750 ml. bottle has approx. 25 ounces, devided by 2 ounces, you can have 12 servings.
Or make it very special and pour one of our specialty-/ ice wines over strawberries (very successful) or your favorite ice-cream (1-2 ounce) (Very luscious) right before serving. All of our specialty wines are good for this, except our #171 which is so rare and perfect as standalone. If served one of our specialty-/ice-wines, have your guest zip a small amount and let it rest for 3 seconds under your tongue before swallowing. It makes a big difference.
Questions, ask us via email custoemrservice@bbgltd.com or call 949.363.9393 Ext 0.
Opening a King Frosch bottle
We get once in a while a phone call, that some customers do not get the cork out of the bottle. As silly as it sounds, we found out that the foil which covers the top of the bottle was not removed before the corkscrew was used.
Almost all King Frosch wine bottles (if not a screw top) do not need a foil cutter to reach the cork where you screw your cork screw in. On the top of the foil there is a little plastic lip protruding, which pulled against its direction it is pointing will cut the foil all around the top of the bottle and voila the top part of the foil is gone.
Storing Wine
All of our dry white wines are generally meant for immediate consumption, while our semi-dry, Noble Sweet (Spätlese/Auslese), some of our red wines and Specialty wines have more aging potential. Auslese and our Specialty wines (TBA’s & Ice wiens) can be stored for decades without a loss of quality.
Recommendations
If you find a wine you really like and would like to stock up on a particular vintage, here are our storage recommendations.
The wines should be stored horizontally, at best, in a year-round constant temperature ranging from 8-12 C/46.4-53.6 F. Great variations in temperature interrupt the aging process. The cellar should be dark and have a humidity of 50-70% in order to keep the corks moist. There are also special “wine refrigerators” on the market, but these are not necessary if you follow the guidelines above.
If you don’t have a wine fridge or wine cellar, use the darkness of a closet, close to the ground and horizontal, so that the cork is covered by the wines (keep moist and there for the seal he should provide)
Suited to Aging
Both King Frosch red and King Frosch white wines are well-suited to aging. Top-quality growths often reach their peak only several years after bottling. The longevity of a wine is influenced by its alcohol, residual sweetness and acidity. Although red wines are usually lower in acidity, tannins contribute to their aging potential. All of our semi-dry, noble-sweet and very fruity wines are well-suited to a longer period of aging.
In general (considering proper storage):
• all dry white wines are good for 4-5 years (but we had some opened 8/9 years later and they were perfect) Rule of thumb, enjoy them in the early years)
• all sweet whites are good for up to 10 years, TBAs and Icewines up to 30 years and longer
• all dry un-oaked reds should be enjoyed within the first 3 years, even if they are goo for up to 4 depending on the year
• all dry oaked reds are getting mostly better by age and some (call us) are awesome even 5-6 years later, but not all oaked wines should be stored to age. Enjoy while they and you last.
• All sweet reds should be enjoyed as soon as you get them, latest 2 years later, even if they go to 3 to 4 years. There is no need to store, since they don’t age well and get better.
• Carpe Diem! Seize your day with a glass of wine!
Try a variety of wines
The only way to find out what kind of wines you really like is to try wines you have never had before. One way to do this is at a wine tasting. Read more about wine sample packs. When you sample wine at a winery or a tasting party, it’s a good idea to follow the rules of the house and “swirl”, “sniff”, “sip” and “spit.” Sometimes this is easier said than done, especially when tasting very good wines. As a wine broker, I have a lot of experience in sampling wines. Once, I sampled over 50 wines in 2 days. Without practicing the “swirl”,”sniff”, “sip” and “spit” technique, I would have been intoxicated after 2 hours. However in order to fully get the full experience swirl,sniff, sip and let it run throughout your mouth and swallow. Go for the full experience. Life is too short.
Here’s another idea. Instead of spitting out the wine, enjoy a flight of wines.
Develop a relationship with your wines
You don’t have to marry them, but it is interesting to find out that some wines taste better at warmer or cooler temperatures, or that they taste better with food than alone or vice versa. How do you find this out? There are no short cuts. The only way to start a relationship with wine is to drink it and enjoy it in different stages. For instance, you can open a red wine and let it breathe for 10 minutes and try it, for 20 minutes and try it and so on. Each time you change a variable, you should notice how the wine has changed and developed a different character.
Add food to the equation and it will change completely again. Drink it in the summer or winter, warm or cold, opened fresh out of the bottle or opened out of the fridge. Take notes if you want to really understand the wine. White wines are not as sensitive as red wines, but you will find that the temperature at which you serve them makes a big difference.
With each degree in temperature change, you should notice a different flavor nuance that comes through in the wine. The warmer the wine is the more flavorful it usually becomes. This is not to say that you should drink white wines when they are warm, it is just interesting to note the effect that temperature has on the taste. Keep track of the desired temperature for a particular wine to get the most enjoyment out of the bottle.
You don’t have to drink the whole bottle
Many time if I say that, I get the answer: Won’t happen in my house…Ok, in the unlikely event that might happen you will be surprised at how many King Frosch wines still taste great a day or two after they have been opened, if not better, than on the day they were opened (that refers to dry reds). I’ve even had my wines that were opened two weeks prior and they still were drinkable. Of course it helps if you try to keep air out of the bottle.
Use any method to close the bottle,
• refill the remaining wine into a smaller bottle, so that less air is in the bottle,
• fill gas in (Argon/Nitrogen very fancy, those gases are lighter than air and ‘throw’ a blanket of gas over the liquid so it is separated from the air/oxygen) or
• just put the cork back on and enjoy the wine the next day or
• if you think you want have this opened bottle for days, just frieze it! Yes, you can frieze wine, however if you decide to enjoy it, put it from the freezer into the fridge first, if it is a dry red wine, then from the fridge on the counter until it reaches room temperature.
The point is that if the bottle is open, the wine reacts with the air. Absents from air is the key factor here. If it’s a white or red wine, store it in the fridge. If you like to enjoy it and if it is a red wine, let it adopt to room temperature on the counter.
I’m not promising that every wine will taste great one/two weeks after opening, but you can always give it a try. Most of King Frosch wines do.
