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Hot Tips for Wine Lovers
- Freezing wine is a perfectly acceptable way to save leftovers. Not a good idea if it's a '61 Palmer, but for the majority of wines purchased and consumed in America these days, a half empty bottle of wine can safely be corked up and put in the freezer to serve another day. Anecdotal experiments have shown that there is little or no harm done to the wine, and that the defrosted product tastes much better than wine stored for a similar period by any other means. IMPORTANT: there has to be room in the bottle for the expansion caused by the freezing, or you'll crack the glass.
- Got this one from Hugh Johnson's video a few years ago: If you're on your way to a party or picnic and have no method of chilling your Beaujolais or white wine, wrap it in wet newspaper and hold it out the window as you drive. It works well, as long as you don't have a stick shift. When you're fishing, keep some extra netting handy and hang beverages over the side and keep submerged until needed.
- When planning a dinner party it is not far-fetched to calculate one bottle of wine per person. If you plan to spend a good deal of time at the table, you'll be surprised how much wine will be consumed along with the good food and conversation.
- Next time you're in pursuit of the perfect martini kick it up a notch. Take those queen-sized olives, flip out the pimento with the toothpick utensil on your Swiss army knife, and stuff each olive with blue cheese (use your fingers - it's the only way). It will amaze you and your guests, and change everyone's life for the better.
- And speaking of cocktail parties, do you know that artichoke dip that everyone makes? An easy variation is to slice up a French bread (a baguette) into thin, round slices. Put a small scoop on each and throw them under the broiler for a minute or so. Really good!
- If you are planning a party that features margaritas from scratch, mix two or three large pitchers ahead of time (without the ice) and pour on the rocks or mix in a blender ONLY as needed. If you make each batch from scratch as you go along, the first round is fun, but after that it's a big mess and you'll find yourself spending more time with the triple sec and the blender than enjoying your own party. (Same goes for most blender drinks.)
- Red wine turned into white! (Or, "store your wine carefully.") We all know that red wine is made by leaving the skins of the grapes with the juice for a period of up to 4 weeks. You can't make red wine from white skinned grapes -- all red wines come from red-skin grapes. Well, some years ago a friend of mine gave me a bottle of 1945 Château Lafite-Rothschild. This rare French red Bordeaux sells at auctions across the country fpr approximately $1,000 a bottle! Wow! Nice gift, huh? Not exactly. This particular bottle of wine had been so poorly stored for so many years (standing upright under the kitchen sink I suspect) that all the pigment had separated and had settled to the bottom of the bottle. The top of the wine looks white, and the bottom sixth, where all the particulates had fallen, is red. I now laugh and tell people I own one of the most expensive paper weights in the country.
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Schaefer's Wines, Foods & Spirits 
