You're Doing it Wrong

Remember that great scene in Mr. Mom where Jack Butler drops the kids off and is told "You're Doing it Wrong"? (YouTube) Well, it appears that I have been doing it wrong.

A comment on my post a couple days ago about foil cutters from Anatoli Levine (@talkavino) politely informed me that The Court of Master Sommeliers suggests the following service standard:

The foil is cut at the second lip to prevent the wine from dripping behind the foil and contaminating future pours

When they say the "second lip" they're referring to making the cut below the collar rather than above it. Like this:

The right way: Cut below the collar with
the knife edge of a waiter's corkscew

If you use the foil cutter I recommended (which I think is rather similar to most foil cutters in terms of where the cut falls) you'll find the cut is made above the collar:

The wrong way: Cut above the collar
with a foil cutter

The Court of Master Sommelier's service standards are actually full of interesting tidbits so I'd recommend giving them a look.

A post on Wine Berserkers discusses very specifically whether to cut the foil over or under with the "overs" and "unders" pretty evenly split (and "tear the whole thing off" by far the most popular option). It also reveals that the collar is evidently known as an "annulus" (cue the Beavis and Butthead jokes!) and a historical health reason for avoiding wine to foil contact. Foil capsules used to be made of lead so it was a particularly bad idea to allow the wine to come into contact with the foil.

Now that capsules (hopefully) don't include lead it's still not desirable for the wine to potentially come into contact with the foil. The thought of wine pouring over shards of metal isn't appealing, so it's probably a better practice to cut beneath the collar even if a foil cutter leaves a clean cut. It's also a good idea to wipe the opening of the bottle with a damp clean towel to remove any other debris that might be present.

I have to admit - I was cutting above the collar even when I used a waiter's corkscrew. I guess I figured that since that's where my foil cutter cut it that was the right place to make the cut.

I was curious about whether this standard of service was upheld in restaurants so I reached out to Master Sommelier George Miliotes. George runs the wine program for The Capital Grille and Seasons 52 restaurants. I was curious about whether they train servers on this aspect of wine presentation. He responded:

@RobertDwyer we cut the foil on the second lip so that there is no chance of wine ever touching the foil!
— The Wine Expert (@TheWineExpert) October 18, 2013

I mentioned that my foil cutter cuts above the collar. His response is pretty telling. "I would never used a foil cutter."

“@RobertDwyer: .@TheWineExpert so you'd not like a foil cutter that cut at the first right I take it?” I wld never use a foil cutter....
— The Wine Expert (@TheWineExpert) October 18, 2013

My thanks to George for his feedback - always timely, accurate, and friendly.

And my thanks as well to Anatoli for turning me on to this. Check out his blog at: http://talk-a-vino.com

Summary

• When cutting a foil, cut below the collar with the serrated knife from a waiter's corkscrew
• Foil cutters make a nice sharp cut but they tend to cut above the collar
• There's nothing wrong with removing the capsule completely - it's just less formal
• I think I'll continue to use my foil cutter but I'll try to become more proficient at cutting a sharp edge with the knife from a waiter's corkscrew

I'd love it if you subscribed to The Wellesley Wine Press for future updates. I'm going to be ramping up Scoop the Spectator 2013 soon so you'll not want to miss it.

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Decade-long Review: Le Creuset/Screwpull Foil Cutter

One of the first wine accessories I ever used was a gift from my younger sister. It was a Screwpull brand gift set that included a corkscrew and a foil cutter. I never got used to the corkscrew portion of the gift set, but the foil cutter served me well for over a decade.

Unfortunately it recently broke. The plastic just just snapped at the apex while I was using it and that was the end of it. I went a few weeks without replacing it because I wasn't sure whether it was a necessary accessory.

If you're not familiar with what a foil cutter is useful for, it's for cleanly severing the foil capsule that covers the top of a corked bottle of wine.

If you don't have a foil cutter, your options are to either peel away the foil capsule altogether, cut it away with the knife that's sometimes built into a corkscrew (which is a little more difficult than using a foil cutter and sometimes results in jagged edges on the remaining foil), or (if the capsule is a little loose) you can just slide it off. Keeping the majority of the capsule on the bottle is purely an aesthetic preference. There's absolutely nothing wrong with tearing the capsule off. I just like the way a bottle looks with the foil cut around the opening.

After a while I started to miss having a foil cutter. I was perfectly happy with my Screwpull so I looked for them on Amazon and found them for around $10 shipped. I noticed some of the reviews saying they "didn't make them like they used to" so I was wondering if I should buy another Screwpull.

Looking a little further I noticed that Screwpull and Le Creuset are the same company and evidently always have been. It looks like Le Creuset is branding more of their wine accessories as their own and the Le Creuset foil cutter gets good reviews on Amazon so I went for the Le Creuset.

It arrived a couple weeks ago and I've been using it since. It feels every bit as good as the last Screwpull that lasted a decade. The Le Creuset may even be a little sturdier.

I'd recommend adding a foil cutter to your collection of wine accessories. They're small and provide a fast and easy way to nicely open, present, and enjoy a bottle of wine.

I'd give this one a full 5 out of 5 stars.
Here's a link to the one I bought off Amazon:

Update: Read this post for some further commentary on where precisely a foil should be cut.

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SOMM Movie Review

I recently enjoyed a fantastic wine movie: SOMM

(click here to view trailer on YouTube if video fails to embed)

It's a documentary that follows four candidates as they relentlessly prepare for what has to be one of the hardest tests in the world: The Court of Master Sommelier's Master Sommelier Diploma exam. There are around 200 Master Sommeliers and in the world (here's the list) and of the 50 candidates who took the exam the year the film was produced, only six passed.

Note that there are a few different governing bodies in wine (here's good post that reviews them) so there are also a couple hundred Masters of Wine in the world. But no matter how you slice it: Attaining this level of mastery is extremely challenging.

The Master Sommelier process includes includes both a written theory portion and a blind tasting of six wines. The blind tasting conveys more interestingly on screen than the written portion so they spend considerable time showing the candidates taste and describe wines when tasted blind. The candidates use a testing rubric which at this point in their careers are etched in each taster's minds. As a result they're like robots rattlings off wine traits:

"Wine #1 is a white wine. Clear, star bright. There is no evidence of gas or flocculation. The wine has a clear straw core, consistent to green reflections in the edge. Medium concentration of color. Aromas are lime candy/lime zest. Crushed apples. Underripe green mango.Underripe melon/melon skin. Green pineapple.

This wine is bone dry. Crushed slate/crushed chalky note. Crushed hillside. There's white flowers almost like a fresh cut flower. White lillies. No evidence of oak. There's like a 'freshly opened can of tennis balls' and a 'fresh new rubber hose' I get.

Acid is medium+, alcohol is medium, complexity is medium+. In conclusion this wine is from the new world, from a temperate climate.

Possible grape varieties are Riesling, possible countries are Australia, age range is 1-3 years. I think this can only be one thing: This wine is from Australia, this wine is from South Australia, this wine is from the Clare Valley. 2009 vintage. Riesling from a high quality producer."

And he's right. It's a Clare Valley Riesling.

The movie does a great job sufficiently familiarizing the viewer with the fundamentals of wine and the Master Sommelier process itself so the movie can be easily understood and appreciated by everyone.

For example, the movie does a great job breaking down how blind tasting (what they like to call "deductive" tasting)  is made up of both sensory observations and being able to map what's they're seeing, smelling, and tasting to knowledge about what characteristics are present in different grape varieties and regions.

While watching the movie I felt a reinvigorated interest in exploring parts of the wine world I'd previously ignored out of lack of familiarity. The most exploratory burst of interest I've had coincided with the WSET Intermediate course I took a few years ago (If you're in the Boston area I do recommend the program through Grape Experience).

But comparing WSET Intermediate to Master Sommelier is like comparing tee ball to being up to bat in the World Series with 2 outs and nobody on down a run in an away game on a chilly late October night. That said, you'll never get to the World Series without first playing little league so the net effect of watching SOMM is that you'll be more likely to want to explore the wine world through formal education.

Overall I think SOMM is a fascinating movie. If you're into wine I think you'll love it. If you're not into wine you'll probably at least like it. Highly recommended.

4/5 Stars WWP: Oustanding

Find it on Amazon

Find it on iTunes



Related: The Second Best Movie Ever About Wine

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Reader Question: Sending Wine to a Friend in Massachusetts

Update: Massachusetts opened up for direct shipment of wine from out of state wineries in 2015. More here...

I received an email this past week that's very similar to one I receive about once a month so I thought it would be useful to share my reply with others. Here's the question:

I have friends in Massachusetts I'd like to thank by sending a couple bottles of wine. What is the shipping situation in Massachusetts? My quick web search tells me that different states have different delivery or shipping regulations.

Massachusetts is indeed a tough state to ship wine to. One of the worst in fact. The American Wine Consumer Coalition recently rated the "friendliness" of wine shipping laws in each state and Massachusetts, along with 11 other states, received an "F". Full report here.

That said it absolutely is possible to get wine shipped to Massachuetts - you just have to buy from a licensed Massaschusetts retailer or winery.

This makes shopping for wine a bit of a tricky endeavor compared to most things you buy on the Internet because the product you want and the state you're shipping to play into which retailer you buy from.

That being the case we just have to figure out which Massachusetts retailer has the wine we're looking for.

The biggest online wine retailer is Wine.com, and fortunately they are able to ship to Massachusetts. People are sometimes puzzled why Wine.com can ship to Massachusetts but other retailers can't. Wine.com can ship to Massachusetts because they've gone through the effort of obtaining a Massachusetts retailer license and all the wine they sell in Massachusetts is purchased from Massachusetts wholesalers.

So if you like buying from a prominent large retailer and want to get your gifting done, they're the first option to consider. Their prices are a tad high I'd say, and their shipping costs, especially for the first bottle, do seem high. But shipping does have its costs.

If you want to send a specific bottle of wine to a specific state (Massachusetts or otherwise) Wine-Searcher.com is the way to go. Wine Searcher is known for its ability to find the best publicly listed price for a given wine, but my favorite part of its search engine is that you can filter on just the retailers within a certain state -or- retailers that ship to that state.

Wine-searcher.com's ability to find specific bottles available
to ship to each state is its killer feature

Wine Searcher doesn't sell wine - they just guide you to retailer websites where you then complete the transaction. Sometimes you'll find phantom availability (that is to say, the retailer doesn't actually have the wine that's listed on Wine Searcher). But for the most part it does work well and is the best way I've found to track down specific bottles of wine that can ship to a certain state.

If you'd like to drop me an email at wellesleywinepress@gmail.com to ask my opinion of a given retailer I'd be happy to offer my input.

And I'd love it if you subscribed to The Wellesley Wine Press for future updates.

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