Editor’s Note: This sponsored column is written by Doug Rosen, owner of long-time Arlington wine store Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway).

When searching for the perfect gift for the wine lover, we should really start at the most obvious: a truly special bottle of wine. If your recipient likes wines of a particular variety, like California cabernet, you might look for a special bottle from a hard-to-find producer. Or ask your wine merchant to help you select a wine from a different place or made from a different grape that has a similar flavor profile to your recipient’s favorite.

Perhaps you can find an older bottle that has been properly cared for and squirreled away. Fine wine merchants often hold some stocks of highly rated selections and offer them for sale at the peak of drinkability, giving a client an opportunity to experience what a well-aged, well cared for wine tastes like. The bottles’ bouquet, palate feel and complexity can only develop over time and no amount of decanting can yield the same results.

Port makes a great gift as there are so many delicious options and in most cases, the consumer can enjoy a well-aged wine immediately.

You can’t go wrong with an aged Tawny Port. It’s hard to beat a glass of Port on a cold evening in front of a fire. The most popular Tawny Ports are 10-year-old and 20-year-old, but you can also find 30 and 40-year-old examples. The number of years designated on the bottle represents the average age of the blend from several vats of various years. Tawny Ports are aged in large wood vats and as they age they slowly oxidize and mellow, losing color and sweetness while gaining nuttiness. Since they are aged in wood for extended periods of time, they don’t need decanting and can be enjoyed to the last drop. Another beauty of Tawny Port is once open they can be enjoyed for months — just keep them in the refrigerator.

Ports represent great value, given that the grower has held the wine in his cellar and aged it for you. Tawny’s are best served cool, which helps moderate the higher alcohol level. They are a gift that keeps on giving.

Vintage Ports are the King of Port Wines. They represent the best wines that a producer can make, encompassing only about two percent of the producer’s total production. They are produced on average only three times in a decade. Vintage Ports are made from the grapes of the finest parcels of land, from usually the oldest vines, the finest farms, and from a single harvest. To this day many houses still tread the grapes under foot in shallow concrete vats. Law dictates they must be bottled unfiltered after only two years in barrel. They are then offered for sale, letting the consumer age them in his cellar. They often need 30 to 40 years to reach their full potential. A good fine wine shop will stock Vintage Ports dating back to the seventies and offer mature wines for sale.

Vintage Ports are truly a grand experience, requiring some forethought as the bottle must stand upright for several days to let the sediment slowly drift to the bottom. Even with three days in an upright position, you will want to decant the wine using a funnel and screen (widely available), rinse out the original bottle to remove the remaining sediment, and then return the decanted wine to the original bottle. After that, you are ready to serve it. Unlike Tawny Ports, Vintage Ports are best consumed within a day or so after opening.

Enjoying vintage port may seem like a lot of work, but I promise you it’s well worth it. Match this grandest of wines with Colston Bassett Stilton, slices of pear, and nuts and you are in for one of the most revered wine and food pairings in the world.

Try it you’ll love it!

Email any comments or questions to drosen@arrowine.com. Follow Doug on Twitter (@ArrowineInc) or like the store on Facebook. Sign up for Arrowine’s money saving email offers and free wine and beer tastings at www.arrowine.com/mailing-list-signup.aspx.

Editor’s Note: This sponsored column is written by Doug Rosen, owner of long-time Arlington wine store Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway).

Okay, there’s no way around it; it takes years of training and experience to taste wine like a pro. However, there are a few things you can learn to be better equipped to analyze and enjoy the wine in your glass.

The first thing is to start out with a clean glass. That would seem obvious but it isn’t. By clean I mean NEVER use a glass straight from your cabinet without first rinsing it with water. All cabinets impart aromas to glasses in a matter of minutes. These aromas taint the wine instantly. Not to mention that many soaps and dishwasher detergents leave noticeable aromatic residues. This is the single most prevalent mistake made.

There are some out there in the wine world who think that rinsing a glass with wine is enough to season a glass but they are wrong. Detergents and their residues are formulated to dissolve in water, not wine, and wine doesn’t get rid of cabinet smells either. Tap water is fine to rinse a glass; if you can then use a little wine in the rinsed glass to remove the water residue and season the glass, even better.

Now how to taste. Start off by selecting a glass that’s generous (at least 8 oz); this gives you enough surface area to swirl the wine and expose it to oxygen without spilling it all over yourself.

Color:

Pour about 1 to 2 ounces in the glass. Use a sheet of white paper, holding it behind the glass to try to get a real sense of the wines’ clarity and color.

Is the wine clear or cloudy? Wine in the glass should always be clear and translucent.

Tilt the glass and observe the color to the rim. Is it consistent or does the color or hue taper off. Young wines have less color variation. Oak aging also fixes color in both reds and whites. The more new wood the deeper the color. Older red wines can take on a brickish tone, while whites become golden.

Not all wines are deeply colored. Malbec, cabernet and merlot-based wines are blue to purple, while pinot noirs, gamays, nebbiolo and sangiovese-based wines have less color naturally and are more red in appearance.

The Nose:

To get started, swirl the wine in the glass to release the aromas. Tilt the glass and really get your nose in there. This is perhaps the most complicated part of the process. The nose tells you many things.

The aroma of the wine should be identifiable as coming from a particular grape variety, for example plums for merlot or lime for sauvignon blanc. The nose also tells you if a wine has been aged in oak and if so what kind of oak was used: spice/vanilla aromas from French oak or coconut aromas from American oak. Keep in mind that the aromatics contributed from the oak aging should never dominate the aromatic profile.

The nose is also the first place to pick up defects in a wine such as:

• Cork taint, which imparts an earthy, cardboard-like smell, akin to a wet basement
• Volatile acidity, or a vinegar smell
• Excess sulphur, like a burned match
• Oxidation, or a sherry-like aroma
• Mercaptan, smells like skunk
• Brettanomyces, which has many unpleasant variations such as barnyard, leather, mouse or band-aid like smells.

Remember, a wine is fermented from grapes and should always smell “fruity.” If it doesn’t, that’s not good! And now for the fun part…

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Editor’s Note: This sponsored column is written by Doug Rosen, owner of long-time Arlington wine store Arrowine (4508 Lee Highway).

Why drink wine? If liquor is quicker and beer cheaper, what makes us go to such lengths to understand, collect and treasure wine?

The answer is simple: no other beverage — alcoholic or not — has the ability to convey the unique flavors of its birthplace. Wine and wine alone, when deftly made, speaks of the flavors of a unique plot, climate, and growing season.

Have you ever wondered why an Oregon pinot noir doesn’t taste like a Burgundy?  Or why a Bordeaux doesn’t taste like a California cabernet or a Cahors like an Argentine Malbec? Terroir is the first place to look. It’s the expression of a unique signature, of an address that can’t be duplicated; the elusive specificity, driven by the confluence of grapes, soil, and sun. It’s the notion that only fermented grape juice has the ability to sign its own birth certificate.

Even identical grapes planted yards apart can yield different flavors.  The undulating hills of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or (golden slope) are the world’s most famous example. Wine enthusiasts can spend lifetimes trying to understand and master the subtleties and nuances of each of the hundreds of parcels. Each of these parcels can have a slightly different soil structure due to its location on the slope, sun exposure and drainage, creates thousands of unique microclimates that affect everything from taste, to aromas, to longevity.

How to explore the notion of terroir? Taste, taste and taste some more, but don’t just taste one bottle at a time. Taste with a purpose. Select at least four different wines of the same varietal (e.g. cabernet, pinot noir or chardonnay) and taste them at one time (a great party theme), noting the differences in color, aromas, texture, flavors and finish. All four can be from the same viticulture area (e.g. Napa Valley, Willamette Valley or Burgundy) or you can choose to tour the world, and select one from each area (e.g. pinot noir from California, Oregon, Burgundy and New Zealand).  For an even more challenging tasting, select four from the same village and note the differences that can be found within an area of only a few square miles (e.g. Chambolle Musigny in Burgundy).

Have fun, but pay attention to your preferences. Was it the aromas, mouth-feel or flavors that you especially liked? Try to dissect exactly what about those components drew you in. Armed with that information, your local fine wine merchant can serve you better on your next visit.

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