Getting Started - What do I need?
Written By: Brian Freedman on Mon, Mar 9th 2009
In many ways, wine is a lot like golf: Without the right equipment, you'll get nowhere in your pursuit of pleasure. But unlike the "good walk spoiled," it's relatively cheap to amass all of the equipment you need to enjoy a good bottle of wine.
Really, you just need three items: A corkscrew to get the cork out of the bottle (unless it's a screw-top bottle, in which case you'll look pretty foolish using one to get tot he vino), a glass to pour the wine into, and, well, a bottle of wine.
There are a million kinds of corkscrew on the market these days, from good old-fashioned waiter's keys to high-tech devices like the Penquin and the Rabbit. It's up to you to decide how much you want to spend and what you want the corkscrew to do (and how quickly you want it to do it!).
As for the latter two, we'll discuss in another section how to make a well-informed wine choice. Though suffice it to say that we'll offer plenty of advice right here. In terms of the glass, however, it really comes down to a matter of price. As long as the lip of the glass is narrower than the widest part of the bowl, you're good to go. From varietal-specific glasses designed to maximize the pleasure you get from one grape over another to everyday stemless tumblers-they all work. the question, as always, is this: What works best for you?
