2-Bottle Rack: Wall mounted cork rack, designed by Deger Cengiz, found at South Street Museum Shop.

Cork Wine Rack

4-Bottle Rack: Modular and foldable, made of high tensile strength coated wire, designed by Ed Kilduff, found at Museum of Modern Art Shop in NYC.

Houdini Wine Rack

6-Bottle Rack: Made of bamboo, designed by M26 Studio, found at Etsy.

Mod Six-Bottle Wine Rack

9-Bottle Rack: Modular, injection-molded from transparent ABC recycled polymer, designed by Dagan Design, found at SFMOMA Museum Store.

Puzzle Wine Rack

Baccarat Oenology

In a nutshell: decanting is pouring wine from its bottle into a pitcher, and “letting wine breathe” is exposing it to air.  Decanting removes sediment, and aerating gets rid of certain odors.

Port and older red wines (10+ years), sometimes develop sediment, and benefit from decanting. Sediment, which comes from the wine’s tannins and pigment, is natural and won’t hurt you, but it doesn’t look or taste good either. Once it’s rid of sediment and displayed in a decanter, an older wine looks particularly elegant.

Reidel Swan

Sometimes a young or less expensive wine benefits from breathing. Aerating can help get rid of minor wine faults, such as gassiness. Merely opening the bottle does not provide enough air contact to improve the wine, but pouring wine into a decanter or glass lets it aerate more effectively.

Rosenthal TAC 02

Emile Peynaud, the highly respected author of The Taste of Wine/The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation, recommends decanting just before serving because “nothing happens physically or chemically in two to three hours.” Other experts suggest decanting ½ – 1 hour before serving. If you’re nervous about decanting in front of your guests, earlier preparation should be fine; it’s more important to do a good job.

Schott-Zwiesel Decanter and Funnel

A few days before serving or decanting a treasured wine, clean your decanter because it takes a long time for the inside to dry. Also, let the bottle sit quietly at room temperature for a few days so that the sediment settles to the bottom of the bottle.

When you decant, you should be able to see the wine and sediment flow through the bottle to its shoulder and neck, either by removing the capsule from the neck and/or placing a light (candle, flashlight or lamp) behind the shoulder and neck. Pour slowly and without stopping until the sediment is just about to escape.

Ravenscroft Vintner's Choice

Decanters usually hold one liter of liquid, so wine from a standard 750 ml bottle will easily fit inside and also leave air space.  Decanters come in a large range of quality, styling, craftsmanship and price (over $1,000 to below $30) and are widely available. Some resources: Esque, Baccarat, Reidel, Villeroy & Bosch, Schott Zwiessel, Rosenthal, Ravenscroft, Williams Sonoma, West Elm, Pottery Barn.

Bordeaux

When I was choosing bottles for my wines, I wanted to do everything possible to offer an aesthetic experience. I was very mindful of creating an honest product that the consumer could trust. I didn’t want the consumer to feel misguided. I didn’t want the consumer to feel embarrassed about choosing the wrong wine.

Burgundy

I considered the three basic shapes of wine bottles – Bordeaux, Burgundy and Flûte (or Hock). The silhouette of a Bordeaux bottle has high shoulders and a long straight neck to hold a sturdy cork. A Burgundy bottle has sloped shoulders, traditionally considered to be more feminine. A flûte  is tall and slim, with flowing shoulders. Similarly, you could easily recognize and make associations with a Champagne bottle with its larger-diameter base, sloped shoulders, thick glass and foil-wrapped cork or Port with its slightly swollen neck and tapered bottle. While a few companies have created beautiful iconic bottles, such as Domaine Ott for its rosé, the cost is extraordinarily high for a small and it is not easy for a wine shop to fit a custom bottle into its display racks. Bouké Red Wine is a blend of Bordeaux grapes, and I chose a Bordeaux bottle for the family of Bouké Red, White and Rosé. For Bouké Perlant, a lightly effervescent wine made from Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, I chose a  brown flûte to indicate the wine’s character and style.

Flûte or Hock

There are three basic colors of wine bottles – flint (clear), green and brown, and on rare occasions you will see a blue bottle. Flint shows off a wine’s color, so important to one’s first impression of a wine. Flint is usually used for rosé, Blanc de Noir Champagne (white sparkling wine made from gently pressed red grapes and minimally extracted color from their skins), or a fresh and young white wine. Green and brown bottles are commonly used for both red and white wines, and to protect wine from ultra-violet light and oxidation. If left in a sunny shop window, an unprotected wine could eventually smell like cabbage. Brown bottles are used in the Rhine or Alsace, which are known for aromatic white wines, and like sunglasses, brown glass offers a bit more protection than green.

On the cork versus screwcap dilemma, I wanted to retain the excitement and ceremony of natural cork. I don’t care for plastic corks – they look and feel cheap to me. I started with natural cork, and gradually switched to screwcaps for all but the dessert wines. If I were producing wines meant to age for ten plus years, I would retain cork for all of my wines. After all, cork has a superb 400-year track record for age-worthy wines. But for fresh, fruit-forward wine, even a 1% risk of corkage (wine with a moldy, musty scent and slight discoloration), it is not worth the benefits. From a restaurant’s point of view, there are equal arguments for presenting a cork at the table in the dining room and ease of opening bottles with screwcaps at a busy bar. For the consumer, there are equal arguments for instilling confidence in the quality of a bottle sealed with a cork versus providing the convenience of simply twisting the bottle open when outdoors.

I gave a great deal of thought to how creative and how traditional should the bottles be. Recognition at a wine shop is key, where visual presentation can inspire an initial purchase. Ultimately, I chose traditional bottle shapes and bottle colors, but took an innovative, contemporary approach to the label.

Palazzo Barberini

What is about a grand staircase, a high ceiling, or a long driveway? They’re dramatic. They’re memorable. They’re awe-inspiring.

For a stupendous gift for Valentine’s Day, your anniversary or important celebration, think big! Consider a large-format bottle of Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux or Napa wine. The largest sizes are rare, but you can find a Jeroboam or double magnum for $200-$500.

8 Sizes of Pol Roger Champagne

NV means non-vintage, and is less expensive than vintage wine that has a year on the label indicating when its grapes were grown. NV is usually a blend of the most recent plus some older vintages of wine. NV is still delicious.

A magnum ages at a slower rate than a standard 750 ml bottle because the air-to-wine ratio is lower, and larger format bottles are usually filled with wine from standard bottles. The larger issue with these formats may be their weight!

So that you’re equipped to purchase a large-format bottle, with a larger-than-life name:

Book groups are congenial. They provide adult time away from the kids. They strengthen social connections. Rarely, though, do book group members admit that it’s a great environment to hyperventilate.

A simple solution for a group of 8-12 talkative folks is Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc or Pinot Gris – all light-bodied, a mix of red and white,  and easy to find.

But it would be more interesting to coordinate the wine with the book being discussed. Choose a wine from the country where the author comes from or where the book takes place. Honor your authors from South Africa with Chenin Blanc or Pinotage, England with Seyval Blanc or Reichensteiner, Portugal with Vinho Verde, Austria with Grüner Veltliner.

Or, coordinate the book with the personality of the wine. If you’re reading a moody novel, drink Nebbiolo from Piemonte. If you’re reading a travelogue, sip a rosé. For memoirs, native wines. For a classic novel, claret.

If you read all 457 pages of a novel, highlighted passages and took time out of your busy schedule to meet with a group of people, you probably want something better to eat and drink than dips, cold pasta salads and nondescript wines. Take it up a notch. Your group will be rewarded.

What happens next: the wine presentation. Why do they bring you the bottle and pour you a sample? A waiter or sommelier (wine director) presents you with a bottle of wine so that you can verify that it is, in fact, what you ordered.  Check. Then, he or she pours you a sample so that you see, smell and taste if is faulty. Hmmm?

How do you survive the wine presentation at a restaurant? Trust yourself. You can easily tell when food smells or tastes bad. Look for similar clues in wines. Defective wines look brown or cloudy. They smell and taste moldy, musty, burnt or like vinegar. If in doubt, ask the waiter or sommelier to examine the wine before it is served to the rest of table. At a restaurant with a focused wine program or a massive wine list, the sommelier is the person who has purchased the wine and knows what it is supposed to taste like.

What should you order when you’re going out with your spouse or friend and want to try something new?  Try the same wine that you like from a different wine region. You could branch out from a California Pinot Noir to an Oregon or New Zealand Pinot Noir. Or, you could try a new wine with similar acidity or body weight (light, medium or full) to wines you normally drink. For example, if you like Sauvignon Blanc, try a Vouvray  (Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley, France) or Albariño (from northwest Spain). If you would like to try a floral, spicy, earthy, minerally, or oaked (rich) wine, don’t be intimidated to ask for a recommendation.

Splitting the tab with friends and family? What do you order? Look for a good value wine rather than a name wine. Instead of matching the wine to the food, try to find something that everyone will like. Good value wines often come from wine regions that most people do not know well. Be forthcoming as possible with the waiter about your price range. Be direct: “We’d like a red wine for about $45. Could you point out something that we haven’t heard of?”

What should you order when entertaining clients? A good strategy is to point to a particular wine on the wine list within your price range and ask the sommelier or waiter for “something like this that could go well with a range of foods.” The waiter or sommelier will understand that you are hinting at the price range. With a large group of people, pick both a red and a white and order seconds of the table’s favorite wine as that bottle empties. Or, pre-empt: Telephone in advance to discuss the wine list and your needs. If it’s a very special occasion, ask the restaurant to pre-set the glasses at the table, chill the wine, or decant it in advance. But, if you are pressed for time and want to make a quick choice to have more client talk time, U.S. wines are usually safer choices than European wines because they are meant to be drunk young and have less vintage variation.

Can you bring your own wine to a restaurant? You can BYOB under certain circumstances. Call ahead to find out if the restaurant allows it,  then determine the charge for corkage (removing the cork from your bottle and serving it you). Corkage is always better received when you call ahead and try to bring something that the restaurant does not already offer on its menu.

Why do restaurants mark up wines? The mark-up reflects purchasing expertise, storage costs and service. You are paying for an expert to buy good wine, regardless of the price. You are paying for the overhead cost of keeping an inventory of wine stored at the right temperature. You are also paying for individual help in pointing out good values, pairing wine with the food that you ordered, seeing that the wine is served at the right temperature and sequence, and making sure that your dining experience is wonderful.

Do you have to tip the sommelier? If your wine service was excellent and it really contributed something extra to your meal, you could place $10-$20 or a 10% extra tip directly into the hands of the sommelier as you leave the restaurant. Even if the tip is clearly intended for the sommelier, when the waiter picks it up from the table there could be a war. At a four star restaurant, you could offer a generous taste of the wine that you ordered to the sommelier or waiter as a way of thanking them for their service.

My next best advice: No longer than one minute when addressing a group.

While a personal message always best, here are some classics for inspiration and handy reference.

A one-line toast can be the most memorable. Some favorites from the movies: Rick to Ilsa in Casablanca: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” • General Patton to the Russian General’s Translator in Patton: “All right. All right, tell him I’ll drink to that; one son of a bitch to another.” • Spock in Star Trek: “Live long and prosper!” • Obi-wan Kenobi to Han Solo in Star Wars (George Lucas): “May the force be with you!”

From musicians: Tevye and Lazer Wolf in the musical Fiddler on the Roof by Sholom Aleichem (book) and Joseph Stein (musical): “To life, to life, l’chai-im, l’chaim, l’chaim to life.” • Alfredo to Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s Traviata: “Libiamo, amor fra i calici/ Più caldi baci avrà.” (“Let us drink, for with wine, love will enjoy yet more passionate kisses”)

From literature: William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: “May a flock of blessings light upon thy back. • Shakespeare, The Tempest: “Look down, you gods, on this couple drop a blessed crown!” • Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor: “Heaven give you many, many merry days!” • Shakespeare, King Henry VIII: “Good company, good wine, good welcome make good people.” • Tiny Tim’s toast from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “Here’s to all of us, God bless us everyone!” • Rudyard Kipling “Here’s to us that are here, to you that are there, and the rest everywhere.”

When you’re toasting foreign friends: French: A votre santé! (To your health!) • Italian: Cin cin! (Cheers!) Alla tua salute! (To your health!) Evviva gli sposi! (Hurray for the bride and groom!) Per cent’anni! (For a hundred years!) • Spanish: Salud! (Health!) • German: Prost! (Cheers!) Zum Wohl! (Bottoms up!) • Russian: Na zdorovia! (To your health!) • Hebrew: Mazel Tov (Congratulations!) L’Chayim! (To life!)

Some simple toasts in English: Here’s mud in your eye! Bottoms up! Here’s luck! Here’s to us! God bless! To good friends! We lift our glasses to you! Cheers!

If you don’t drink alcohol, pour something else into your glass. If you’re addressing a crowd, do it once everyone is served a drink, after the main course has been finished, or at the end of an award presentation. If you are the honoree, make a reply toast or stand up and say thank you. Good luck!

Tulip-Shaped Glass

A clear, uncolored, unetched, 10-12 oz. stemmed glass will show off the wine’s color, concentrate its aromatics, direct its taste across your palate, and prevent your body heat from affecting the wine. If the bowl of the glass is too small, you won’t be able to smell the wine as well. If the bowl is too large, you’ll be focused on the alcohol level rather than the aromatics. A standard 750 ml wine bottle holds 25.4 oz. Assume 5 oz. servings and 5 servings per bottle. Fill the glass half-full so that you have enough room to take a deep breath and enjoy the bouquet.

For tastings, fill the glass 1/3 full so that you can both tilt the glass to look at the wine’s color and swirl it without spilling. If several wines are being tasted, serve 1 oz. portions.

32, 22 and 13 oz. Glasses

I like to create an elegant table setting with different glasses for a multi-course meal. If friends bring an extraordinary wine from their cellar, I’ll pull out my 32- and 22-oz glasses. They make a great wine taste even better, no kidding. Beware of too many glasses on the table at the same time – they telegraph too much food and wine ahead. I think that glasses look best in sets of three. Some options:

Flute and Trumpet

Sparkling wine: Flutes are best because they allow the bubbles to stream upward longer. Connoisseurs prefer flutes to trumpet-shaped glasses because they focus the fruit better, but I like them both.

Aperitif: Sherry is perfect in a small, slender, stemmed glass.Red versus white wine glasses: Use a slightly larger glass for red wine.

Port: Use a tulip-shaped glass.

Cognac or Armagnac: Aaaah, a brandy snifter or inhaler is called for! This is a short-stemmed glass with a tulip shaped bowl. Pour 1-2 oz. servings because they have 40% alcohol content.

Shorter Stemmed Glass for Dessert Wine

Dessert wine: Shorter-stemmed tulip-shaped glasses are ideal because they allow you to breathe deeply, but here’s your chance to use the small decorative glasses you got for your wedding or discovered at an outdoor market. Pour 1 oz. servings since the wine may be fortified or very rich.

Coupe glasses are too wide to concentrate a wine’s aroma and too squat to showcase a sparkling wine’s bubbles, but they look quite seductive as dessert bowls for sorbet, fruit salad, mousse or pudding. Goblets do not focus a wine’s aromas, but are lovely for water, soda, juice or iced tea. Your guests who do partake in wine and liquor still want to hold a pretty glass!

No doubt about it, wine tastes mediocre in plastic. But sometimes it’s the feasible solution. There are significant differences in the quality and design of plastic stemware and cups, so make an effort to find good ones at a wine or party shop.

11 oz for Red, 8 oz for White

While connoisseurs frown at etched glass, I think they add style, texture and luxury to a table setting. But, stay away from colored glassware because it makes the wine’s color look ugly.

Unless they’ve chosen a specific etched glass pattern for their registry, pick simple, elegant, classic glasses as a wedding present. Tastes in design are so personal, and you want the happy couple to use and appreciate the stemware rather than stash it in the back of their closet and collect dust.

To clean wine glasses, rinse them a few times in hot water. If they don’t get sparkly clean, then use warm soapy water, dishwashing detergent, baking soda or washing soda. Polish with a lint-free cloth and get ready for your next affair!

The keys to these tasty dishes are finding fish with good texture, authentic West Indian red hot pepper sauce, and vegetables with vibrant colors. Buy salt cod belly from a fishmonger, rather than packaged salted tail fillets at the supermarket. It will retain its shape rather than turning to shreds. Immerse it in water for three days, refrigerate, and change the water a couple of times each day before use. This will rehydrate the fish and get rid of the excess salt. Also, use a West Indian hot pepper sauce, such as Grace, not Tabasco, which has too much vinegar and salt for these dishes. Otherwise, use diced, hot and spicy Scotch Bonnet peppers. Red, yellow and green bell peppers enliven the presentation, and adding fresh cilantro at the end adds another fresh flavor and texture. (Recipes below.)

Salt Cod with Peppers and Hot Pepper Sauce

PREPARATION: Soak salt cod for three days in refrigerator, refreshing the water twice a day.

Remove skin from the cod with a sharp knife. Slice the fish into bite-size pieces.

Sauté sliced yellow onion and diced garlic in canola oil on high heat.

Add sliced peppers; stir with tongs.

Add salt fish. Move ingredients around pan so they don’t stick.

Add 1 tsp pepper sauce.

Serve with lime and cilantro.

ACCOMPANY WITH: a salad of sliced cumbers, onions, thinly sliced celery, curly parsley, oil, and white or apple cider vinegar.

WHEN TO SERVE: Delicious hot or chilled for lunch or appetizer.

WINE: Perfect with Bouquet Rosé. The wine’s fruitiness and sweetness made a beautiful contrast with the cod’s savory and spicy flavors.

Salt Fish Fritters

PREPARATION: Soak salt cod for three days in refrigerator, refreshing the water twice a day.

Cut the cod into small pieces, the size of sugar cubes.

Combine 1 c flour, 1 tsp baking soda and ½ tsp salt in a large bowl.

Add the sliced cod to the dry mixture.

Add diced garlic and scallions.

A batter will form with a doughy consistency.

Add diced red pepper and pepper sauce.

Fry a sample test fish cake, the size of a small pancake and lightly browned. Adjust salt for flavor or peppers for color.

ACCOMPANY WITH: a strong flavored sauce, such as a sweet and spicy dip or aioli. The flour gives the cod a more subtle or neutral flavor, rather than a spicy taste.

WHEN TO SERVE: Fry and eat; it’s not as good when re-heated. Great for brunch or lunch.

WINE: Vee and I liked this with Bouké Perlant, a crisp, light-bodied, lightly effervescent wine.

Herring with Spicy Tomato Sauce

PREPARATION: Buy smoked herring from a smoked fish store, with the bone in. Without bones, the texture is too mushy.

Peel off the skin and lift out the spine of the herring. Cut in half and remove the bones with fish bone tweezers or by hand. There are a lot of bones in herring. Slice into bite-size pieces.

Sauté a sliced yellow onion, diced garlic, and sliced peppers.

Move them to one side of the pan to make space for the herring. Sauté the fish briefly.

Move them to one-third of the pan to make space for balsamic vinegar. Heat and stir.

Add 2-3 TBSP tomato paste and ½ tsp pepper sauce; stir.

Add thinly sliced tomatoes.

Plate and top with cilantro.

ACCOMPANY WITH: “bakes,” also called Johnny Cakes. Made with flour, salt, sugar and milk but without eggs, they are similar to savory pancakes. (We served it with couscous, and Vee loved the cross-cultural combo.)

WHEN TO SERVE: Excellent hot or chilled. Filling enough to be a main course.

WINE: Although this is a fish dish, we liked it best with Bouké Red, which tastes great with tomato sauces.

Salt cod is sometimes served as a delicacy at restaurants. Brandade de Morue is puréed salt cod, potatoes, cream, garlic, thyme, cloves, bell peppers and lemon.

Baccalà is also salt cod, sometimes cooked with olive oil, black olives, onions, tomatoes and oregano. I found basic, packaged, salted, boneless, skinless pollock fillets for $4.99/pound, which is hard to beat, at the grocery store, but am happy to have found a quality piece of salted cod fish with good texture from our local fish store.

SHOPPING LIST:

2 lbs salt fish

1 package of BONE IN smoked herring

1 large yellow onion

1 head garlic

1 each: green, red and yellow bell peppers

1 bunch of scallions

2 plum tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

Balsamic vinegar

1 bunch fresh cilantro

West Indian hot pepper sauce

All-purpose flour

Baking powder

I was trying to think of another nutty dessert for the red dessert wine, and remembered walnut pie, a variation on pecan pie (a bit too sticky for dessert wines), here without corn syrup but including coffee. It’s one of the first dishes I learned to make when CuisineArts were introduced. It was lovely with Bouquet Red Dessert Wine’s rich flavors. My family couldn’t wait, and ate most of the pie for brunch, but I managed to save some for after dinner.