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guest’s dining experience is not complete
without
proper wine service. A server is not maxi-
mizing income opportunities without proper wine service
skills. A meal is not truly complete without the accompani-
ment of wine. Proper wine service brands a restaurant and
ensures repeat clientele and positive reputation. Guests
will return often and recommend the place to their friends,
thus causing the restaurant and the team members to
prosper. Second, the sale of a glass or a bottle of wine adds
to the guest’s check thereby automatically increasing tips.
Third, wine adds to the profit of the restaurant.
What are the different categories of wine?
Wine fits into the following categories:
Table Wine: Red, White or Rose. Most have an alcohol
content of below 14% and are made to accompany any
food.
Fortified /Dessert Wines: They have an alcohol content
of 15% to 24% and have had neutral grape spirit added at
some point during vinification.
Sparkling Wines: These wines contain carbon dioxide
as a result of a second fermentation either in the bottle,
Champagne most famously, or in large closed tanks, Asti,
Prosecco, inexpensive brands.
What gives wine its color?
The juices of nearly all grapes are white; the color comes
from the skins.
Red Wine is fermented with the skins of the grapes, thus
the natural pigment from the skin enters the wine and gives
it the color.
White Wine is fermented without the skins, which is
removed right after crushing.
Rose Wine is fermented with the
skins for a short time
and then the juice is
drawn off to fin-
ish the fermenta-
tion alone.
What is a varietal
wine?
In the United States,
a varietal wine is labeled
according to the predominant
grape from which it is made. Ex-
amples of varietal grapes are: Chardon-
nay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chenin
Blanc. A varietal wine in the United
States must be comprised of at
least 75% of the grape stated on
the label.
In Europe, wines are normally
not named after the grape vari-
ety, but rather after the region
where the grape was grown.
How is sweet wine made?
There are two commonly en-
countered wines with sweet-
ness, fortified and late harvested.
Fortified wines, Port, Sherry and
Madeira, plus a world of imitators,
are produced by adding neutral grape
spirit to a fermenting wine, thus raising the
alcohol environment t o a mortal level for the
yeast. Port and some Madeiras are naturally sweet
as the residual sugar comes only from the grapes while
Sherry and some Madeiras are sweetened after
being fermented to dryness by the addition
of sweetening agents. Late harvested
wines contain only natural residual
sugar from the harvested grapes.
Late harvested wines as the name
suggests are produced from over-
ripe, late picked grapes, most
famously Sauternes from France
or Beerenauslese from Germany.
In the United States a wine labeled
late harvest must state grape sugar at
harvest and residual sugar in the finished
wine. Most late harvest wines contain 9-12%
alcohol by volume. Fermentation is typically
halted naturally as the sugar rich environment
causes difficulty for the yeast.
What is generic wine?
American generic names like Burgundy,
Rhine, and Sauterne came into use when
European emigrants first made wine
in this country and named them after
areas from which the wine had similar
characteristics. U.S. wineries prefer to
use varietal labeling for their premium