The enjoyment of wine

Enjoyment of wine lies not just in the quality of the product. You need the right accessories to fully enjoy and savour wine. I've always believed that wine is just a drink, but drinking it is about enjoyment.

And wine may be a complex thing (red wine has some 300 chemical constituents) but the things to help you enjoy it as a drink are simple.

I would like to think that I'm not a wine snob, even if I enjoy drinking good wines. But I do draw the line at certain things. For example, I walked into a Japanese restaurant in Adelaide recently with a bottle of wine under my arm, and we had to drink it from blue plastic beakers.

The right glasses are important. They should be clear and generally unadorned. That way you can appreciate the colour of the wine, a useful measure in assessing its quality. The right shape is also important, because it enables you to swirl the wine around and smell it (the "bouquet"). You don't have to smell it, but it will give you an advance idea of what to expect when you taste it a few seconds later.

Normally in a good restaurant a wine waiter will offer you a taste before you tell him or her to go ahead and pour. I always do, and I have sent a few wines back because they are oxidised, corked or poor. It's not snobbish, it's rather like ensuring your food is hot, fresh and wholesome.

Two of the things you need to enjoy a wine are good glasses and a good corkscrew. A few years ago the International Standards Organisation established a standard for wine tasting and judging glasses, and the result was the XL5 tasting glass, illustrated. It has classic proportions to enable drinkers to look at, smell and taste wines. The nature of the glass concentrates the aromas and flavours in the wine.

You can hold the glass by the stem whether smelling, tasting or just drinking. All wine show judges use these glasses to assess wines. I find them pretty much universal for table wines, most sparkling wines or even fortified wines. I use these glasses, which will not discolour and contain crystal, for use at home, at my office and for tastings. They are excellent.