All wine improves with age.
This is true only of the grandest 5% of wine. The rest is designed to be drunk young.
The heavier the bottle, the better the wine.
There is zero correlation between bottle weight and wine quality. And wine’s biggest contribution to carbon emissions is making and transporting bottles. (See all our articles on the move towards lightweighting bottles, and my report on the cost of bottle manufacture in Bottle manufacturers, take note!)
Red wine is usually more serious than white.
White wine can be every bit as complex as red, and some of the best ones last longer. (For some examples, see this list of wines, all with drink dates extending to 2045 and beyond.)
The second wine on a restaurant’s wine list is the one to go for.
Restaurateurs are wise to this perception and will probably add a hefty mark-up to it. (For more tips on wine pricing in restaurants, see Which country’s restaurants are kindest to wine lovers?)
Red wine should be served warm.
Absolutely not. All wine, whatever the colour, should be refreshing and the ideal serving temperature is pretty similar for reds and full-bodied whites. (See Serving wine in The Oxford Companion to Wine for a quick and thorough treatise on the importance of serving temperature – and note that a good round number is 13 °C/55 °F for both reds and full-bodied whites.)
You should give white wine a good chill.
If a wine is too cold it won’t smell or taste of anything. Just out of a domestic fridge will do nicely, and it’ll probably warm up in the glass anyway. (See entry mentioned above!)
You need lots of different wine glasses.
There is no practical reason why different wines should be served in different glasses – though it helps the glass manufacturers! (For more on the various shapes and how to choose a glass that suits your needs, see First choose your glass.)
When you’re given the wine to taste in a restaurant, it’s to see whether you like it.
Definitely not. It’s to let you check that it’s what you ordered, served at an agreeable temperature and smells clean, so is not faulty. (For more details on what to expect when the sommelier serves you wine, see Eating out – tips for wine lovers.)
A corked wine has bits of cork floating in it.
No, a corked, or cork-tainted, wine smells mouldy or of damp cardboard, the result of a dud cork. You can read more about the consternation corked wine causes the industry in Seeking (wine bottle) closure – although note that the actual frequency of corked wines is quite low.
Only cheap wine is stoppered with a screwcap.
Some top-flight producers use screwcaps now because they know they are more reliable than natural cork. See how corks and screwcaps held up to each other in Cork v screwcap – the tasting.
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You can read extended versions of all of Jancis's FT pieces every Saturday on our site.
