SERVICE

Definitively one of the most important aspects in restaurants is the wine service, and from that service depends, very often, that we have a pleasant visit.

The experience with wine has to be good and pleasant especially if it’s the first time so it is desired to be repeated. But in many restaurants of Mexico, even some with great reputation and tradition, it is hard to find the qualified personnel to sell and service the wine, therefore we may end up in the hands of people with minimal knowledge in wine matters who will try to recommend and sell the wine that is more convenient for the restaurant or him self according to price, storage or promotional reasons but never the one that suits either our food or taste.

The best service we can have in a restaurant is that from the Sommelier, who is the person in charge of taking care, control, promote and provide a qualified wine service. He is the right person to consult in order to select the type of wine we need because he knows the wine chart and menu 100 % and he knows the different options for Pairing our food so we can get the a pleasant experience with wine.

Right after the restaurant’s captain has taken our order, the Sommelier will approach our table in order to offer the wine chart and his services, this is the right moment to ask for help to select our wine, or well, if we already know what we want, we will check the chart to see if they have the brand, type, vintage or region that we are looking for.

Once the wine is selected, the Sommelier will bring it from the cellar and will present it to us, we need to be very careful to check if is exactly the wine we ordered and the information from the tag match with those from the wine chart, in order to do so, we need to check, the brand, the vintage, type and name; is important to check the physical state of the bottle, it has to be in good condition, without alterations, paper tag without stains or deteriorated, the glass is not broken and the cork is in good conditions.

After we have verified that the wine presented is the wine that we ask for, the Sommelier will proceed to uncork the bottle and taste the wine before we do, it is the obligation of the Sommelier to withdraw the bottle and bring a new one if there is any defect he notice after tasting it, if the wine is good he will serve a little bit in our wineglass to confirm that the quality and temperature are appropriated.

Once we have tasted and approved the wine, the Sommelier will fill up our wineglasses, making sure to put the same amount of wine among all the persons on the table, if necessary he will open a second bottle following the same process and bringing new wineglasses.

A very important aspect to consider is that if the wine is not what we expected or we didn’t like the taste, we need to know that all wines, whites or reds, young or old, they tend to get better when they enter in contact with oxygen, so we can give them some time to open and express their taste better. Not any time is the best time to open a bottle; we need to consider the age, type and temperature. When the wine is completely bad we can ask for the bottle to be changed, but when our expectations are not reached, or we try a new brand and we didn’t like it, it doesn’t mean that is not good. We have to consider the difference between the facts that we didn’t like the wine to the fact that the wine is in bad condition.

In general, we can make the best out of our visit to the restaurant when we get the advice from an expert, without being afraid to ask, because their job is to help us.

GLASSWARE

The right way to hold the wineglass is by the stem, in this way we will avoid making stains on the glass and warm the wine with our body temperature, is for this reason that they need to have a long stem of 4 to 5 centimeters (around 1.97 inches), however it doesn’t have to be very tall either because it will have less stability and it can be easily turned. It is important to mention that the wineglass doesn’t have to be filled up to the top. If the wineglass has a great capacity just a third of it needs to be served. Small wineglass has to be half filled up. The intention of this is to avoid any accident when the wine is stirred to appreciate its scent; it has to have space to get air without any risk. We have to stir the wine in a calm way, never in a fast or rough way.

We may not have the right wineglass for every type of wine, or more specific, not for every kind of grape, but definitely to taste wine in a thin wineglass cup of good capacity with a narrow top to enjoy the scent of the wine can result in a great experience.

According to the experts, glassware has to be smooth, transparent and thin, if we have tinted glass, or decorated glass or thick glass the appreciation of the wine color is going to be distorted.

At the same time, the wineglass needs to be round, under no circumstance they should be square, pyramidal or with any other shape. That will interfere with the wine and it’s possibility to slide in a soft and clean way, neither to interfere with the scent emerging from the top of the wineglass to have a better appreciation of both, wine and scent.

TEMPERATURE OF WINE SERVICE

Temperature plays a very important role in wine degustation in order to appreciate their qualities better. Not just any place has the proper conditions to place or storage wine, so it is possible that when we order some wine it will not be at the right temperature, so we must demand that somehow they find the way to manipulate the temperature of the wine we had ordered.

The coldest the temperature is in a wine, the harder it is to appreciate its scent and taste, but if the temperature is very high, wine shows a different face of what it is in reality, for example; alcohol is more intense.

A reference guide can be the following:
- Sparkling and Sweet White Wines around 5 and 7 degrees C (41 to 45 Fahrenheit)
- Light White Wines around 6 and 7 degrees C (43 to 45 Fahrenheit)
- White Wines with body and Rose around 8 and 10 degrees C (46 to 50 Fahrenheit)
- Light Red Wines around 12 and 14 degrees C (53 to 57 Fahrenheit)
- Red Wines half body around 14 and 16 degrees C (57 to 61 Fahrenheit)
- Red Wines full bodied around 16 to 18 degrees C (61 to 64 Fahrenheit)

Some other rules to observe suggest that the young wines should be tasted before the old wines. Dry wines before the sweet wines, white wines before red wines and light wines before the full-bodied wines; in this way we can appreciate wine better, respecting its conditions and letting the wine express itself.