Opening a Bottle of Wine

"Hi this is Chuck Byers from Expert Village at Fazio's Restaurant. What I like to do, once the bottle is on the table, I don't like to move the bottle. I open the wine. As you can see I have a two-stage cork, which is very, very handy. That looks like a fancy wine steward. It's very, very easy to open. Now, he gives me the cork. Why does he give me the cork I wonder? Why do you give me the cork, Joe? Well, a couple reasons. One of them, it looks very good. The other one is to plug your nose. You should never ever smell the cork. Every cork smells just the same. The cork will indicate if it's moist, that will be indicated because it's always in contact with the wine. Keep it moist and air doesn't get inside the bottle. Also, most of the time, the cork at the end, will indicate the level of sugars sometimes. If the sugars crystallized at the end, you'll know that wine might be high in sugar. Other than that, there is no reason to smell the cork. Now when you decant the bottle of wine, the best way is once you start, you never stop. Go all the way until the end. Because if you pour back and forth, back and forth, it's like a wave action. So don't stop. Just keep going and the sediments will stay at the bottom. As you see in this case, we are fortunate; there are no sediments in the bottle. I'm going to let the wine open and come back in maybe ten, fifteen minutes to serve the wine if that's okay with you. Thank you very much. So as you can see, there's a lot o work that goes in to pouring a bottle of wine. It's not just click, plop. There's lots of tradition, and there's lots of fun. And I like all this stuff, and I like having fun with wine. Part of the fun is the tradition and the process."