Your Questions Answered

Does dry Champagne pair well with the dessert course?

- 

Dry Champagne is ideal as an aperitif or served throughout a meal. Avoid serving it with the dessert course because the extra sweetness hardens the taste of the Champagne. If you want to continue with a sparkling wine with dessert, serve a medium dry Champagne. Otherwise, it’s best to serve serve a dessert wine, such as late-harvest Muscat or Sémillon. At my last dinner party, I served an ice wine from Canada, which was a great hit with my guests.

Which is the most important wine region in the world?

If I were to choose a single region, it would have to be Bordeaux in southwestern France. This is the most famous old world wine region with some of the most sought after wines. The main red varieties are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot, while the white varieties are Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. The red wines, which are full-bodied, rich and bold are usually a blend, and are the most popular. The blend in a red Bordeaux makes for a more complex and interesting wine.

How much wine constitutes a ‘unit’ of alcohol?

It’s a common misconception that one glass of wine equals one ‘unit’. The unit in which alcohol is measured for those advocating healthy consumption is actually 10 millilitres of pure alcohol. So to work out how many units are in a glass requires you to know how much alcohol is in the wine, and how much wine is in the glass. For example, a ‘large glass’ is commonly 250 millilitres. If it is a wine with 14% alcohol, it actually contains 3.5 units, not one: the formula is millilitres of liquid (250) x alcohol (14) divided by 1000.

Does air-travel in a pressurized cabin at high altitudes affect our ability to taste wine or does the character of wine actually change while in flight?