Okay, maybe a little dramatic. You can certainly live without these items, but for wine lovers like us, it would be a challenge we’d rather not face. So, let’s take a closer look at the top essential items needed to get you started, or enhance your wine journey.The essentials:
- Wine Opener: I think we can all agree that this gadget is key to breaking into that bottle of liquid gold. For ease of use, we recommend the Rabbit Wine Corkscrew. If you are feeling fancy and want more of a professional look, this is a personal favorite corkscrew. Keep one in your kitchen, your purse, your bar cart- always be prepared!
- Wine Stopper: for those of us that enjoy a glass (or two) but need to safely store our wine for another day, these wine stopper are a dream. We have tried all of the cute, fancy, decorative ones, but these are always our go-to. For Champagne or anything sparkling, give these stoppers a try.
- Wine Glasses: this may be a sensitive topic, but a wine glass’ shape and thickness does affect how the wine is perceived. We will do a deeper dive into wine glasses on a later blog post, but for today, we recommend to invest in a good set of red wine glasses. We love Riedel. Their crystal glasses are strong, yet offer that nice thin rim to really maximize your experience.
- Decanter: call us old school, but we prefer the decanting method over aerator, but you do you! The goal here is to expose your wine to oxygen to help smooth it out- think harsh tannins or any bitter taste. You should only need to do this to your red wines. A small side note- it is fine to decant white wines as well but you could lose some of the freshness if you decant too long.
- Wine Preserver: this is a bit of an investment vs the wine stoppers mentioned above. However, if you plan to store your opened wine longer than 3+ days after opening it, then you really need a wine preserver instead. There are a couple of options out there, but Coravin is our favorite.
- Wine Glass Cleaning Brushes: if you are going to invest in some nice wine glasses, you need to take care of them- AKA keep them away from the dishwasher! This set has you covered- with a white wine, red wine and decanter brush.
- Polishing Cloth: saving the best for last here. Some people’s biggest pet peeves may be food smackers, slurping or chewing ice. One of mine is those little fuzzies left behind from your cleaning towel on your perfectly clean wine glasses. This gem is the solution to getting those perfectly clean, streak free wine glasses- it is pure magic!
*Commissionable links included in this post.*
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