Give a Gift: Gift Packs For All

Say Congratulations with a 6-bottle pack delivered direct to their door! Ships free. Make any occasion extra special with one of our wine gift packs. Six or twelve bottles of wine make a memorable and impressive gift. Plus, you both get a wine guide, tasting notes, free shipping, exclusive promotions and inside tips on new finds. All with no obligation or commitment. Just good taste.

Wine Gift Baskets

Give a wine gift basket from MyWinesDirect. Send something special - a gift basket filled with wine, chocolate, and other goodies. Who can resist? Everyone loves getting a deluxe wine basket delivered to their home or office. The only question is whether they'll share.

Wine Gift Certificates

Give them what they want! A gift certificate from MyWinesDirect.Let your recipients have the fun of choosing their wines. We'll mail a personalized card and wine gift certificate to their home or office with your message. They can choose what they want, when they want.

Wine Guide: Storing Wine

Many people think that if they're going to store wine at home then they need a cellar. But the word "cellar" conjures up images of dark, cavernous chambers cut out of bedrock, or slick, temperature and humidity-controlled rooms lined with mahogany wine racks. All very nice, but not at all necessary. We recommend you interpret "cellar" somewhat loosely.

There are four main things to consider when storing wine: temperature, light, vibration and keeping the cork wet.

Temperature: Both red and white wine likes to be kept cool. 55°F is ideal, but more important than this magic number is that the temperature doesn't fluctuate. Better a constant 65°F than 40° one day and 80° the next.

Now, some wines require not months but many years, even decades, of bottle aging before they're ready to drink. This is a small percentage of all the wines made, but nonetheless, it is an important one. Where you store these high quality (and often expensive) wines designed for long aging takes on a special importance if your investment is to be protected. In this case you may want to consider one of the commercially available wine storage units, which come in a variety of sizes and finishes. Another alternative is off-site storage, where you rent a locker in a temperature and humidity-controlled wine storage facility. This option is great for wines that you don't plan to drink for some years and has the added advantage of being out of reach; a real bonus during those weak moments.

As your collection of wine grows you'll need to keep track of it. An old-fashioned cellar book where you record each new wine that goes into your cellar and cross them off as you take them out, works just fine. These days, however, there are also numerous cellar software programs that make it easy and fun to manage your wine collection.

You don't need to analyze wine to enjoy it, but if you pay attention to what you're tasting you'll find that you'll be better able to identify what you like or don't like in a wine. It's a bit like languages: You don't have to speak Italian to visit Italy, but if you know a few words, your enjoyment can be greatly enhanced.

Before you taste make sure there are no distracting odors in the room, like cooking smells or perfume. The only thing you should smell is the wine in your glass.

Glasses should be clean and dry and filled with only a small sample of wine (about a quarter of the glass). Wines all have certain components and characteristics in common. When we taste, we use sight, smell and taste to recognize the above various components and to assess the quality and health of the wine. So let's give it a go.

Appearance

Intensity: is the color pale or deep?

Smell or "Nose"

Taste or "palate"

Now the fun part -- you actually get to drink the stuff! Take a sip of wine and swirl it around the mouth so that the wine is in contact with all parts of your mouth: tongue, gums, soft palate. Even better, tilt the head forward so that the wine is behind the front teeth and then slurp air into the mouth over the wine. This seems weird at first, and goes against everything your mother taught you to do at the table, but it's worth it. You can taste much more of the wine if you aerate it in this way.

So what are you looking for?

Sweetness: an easy one. Sweetness is immediately noticeable on the tip of the tongue. If there's no apparent sugar the wine is called "dry".

Acidity: very important if the wine is to be refreshing and balanced. Lemon juice and vinegar are acidic. Too much and the wine tastes too tart; too little and the wine is known as "flabby", tasting heavy and just not refreshing.

Alcohol: a vital component in wine, but one that shouldn't stand apart from the other elements if the wine is to be balanced. When the alcohol is too high, there will be a bit of a burning sensation after the wine is swallowed.

Tannin: a natural preservative found in grape skins and stalks, tannin is the stuff that makes young red wines seem harsh and leaves the mouth feeling dry. If you want to know how tannin feels when it's not in wine, brew some very strong black tea and you'll soon know! Tannin's role as preservative is extremely important in high quality red wines that are made to age for many years.

Body: an indicator of how the wine feels in the mouth. Pinot Noir or Beaujolais tend to feel quite light in the mouth while Bordeaux or Australian Shiraz tend to be full and dense. So, the progression for both reds and whites is light-bodied, to medium bodied, to full-bodied.

Fruit: the taste and intensity of the fruit in the mouth; generally, the better the wine, the more evident the fruit. Also, younger wines will often display more fruit than mature wine. Length: how long the taste of the wine lingers in the mouth after swallowing is a good indication of the wine's quality: the longer the better.

Conclusions

Having considered the above elements, what did you think of the wine?

Quality: you might think it's obvious to say that a $100 bottle of wine is likely to be high quality and a $5 wine low quality, but the assessment of quality goes beyond this. A wine that looks clear and bright, has a pronounced, intense nose, shows good fruit and balanced acid, sweetness and alcohol, and has a long finish might be an inexpensive wine. It would be classified as good quality, though, because it is a good example of its type. So as your tasting progresses, question the wine. Is it a good example of its type?

Maturity: this is a measure of the wine's readiness to drink, which is not the same thing as its age. Many wines are made to be drunk as soon as they are bottled while others require years (or decades) of maturation in bottle to reach their optimum state. Simple wines, which are designed to be drunk young, will not improve with age. Rather they will deteriorate and be over the hill if kept too long.

Faults: Thankfully, modern winemaking practices have reduced most of the problems we used to commonly find in wine, but there's still one which affects around a small percent of bottles: bad corks. "Corked", the term used to describe the affliction, has nothing to do with cork floating in the wine, but rather (not to get too technical) a condition in which the wine has reacted with a substance in the cork, producing a musty, corky smell and taste, reminiscent of wet cardboard. The wine should always smell clean and appealing. The cork problem is the reason behind many wineries switching to synthetic closures or screw caps, which are now widely used with aromatic varietals like Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling. So don't be put off is you see a screw cap on your wine. It doesn't mean cheap wine, it means the winemaker is sick of cork problems and wants to preserve the freshness of the wine.