1939 The Gentleman's Companion volume II Beeing an Exotic Drinking Book

THE EXOTIC DRINKING BOOK

Actually our first experience with wine service is utterly simple, easy, and without any more problem than a little chilling if, and where, indicated. THE FIRST ABC of WINE SERVICE White Wines: go with seafood, light-meat poultry; with fruits, sweets, and desserts.... Champagne, although white, is traditional with game or throughout any meal, if and when desired. Red Wines: go with meats generally, and dark meats in particular; with entree, game, and roast.... Port goes with cheese. Not with Salad: as a general rule wine is skipped during the salad course, the acid dressing interferes with the true wine taste. WINE TEMPERATURES White wines must be chilled, except of course the tawny fortified types like sherry, Madeira, Marsala and so on. Red wines should never be chilled, except what we buy as Sparkling Burgundy.... Bordeaux red wine should be served a trifle higher in temperature than -the dining room. . . . Burgundy red should be slightly cooler, or as it comes from cellar. The easiest way to handle a red claret wine is to decant it and let stand in the dining room for three or four hours before pouring, see Pages 195 & 196. Serving a red wine really chilled would hamper its taste and flavour severely. For further thoughts on red wines in the Tropics, turn to Pages 197 & 198, and not too distant, below. SIP WINE, DON'T DRINK IT Somewhere the fiction got about that wine was made solely to quench thirst. So it may be, beside the hearth of our worthy and horny handed son of toil, perhaps, but no amateur worthy of the name ever gulps decent wine. Water is for satisfying thirst, wine is to be sipped and enjoyed. ' First twirl a half filled glass, and watch the lovely jewel-like colour fan up on the empty inner side; then sniff it in leisurely fashion to catch the bouquet.

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