Six things people think are important in wine (but are not)

And four things no one cares about but definitely should

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When it comes to wine, many people worry about the wrong things.

Look, there’s no fault assigning here. The wine industry is full of misinformation and clichés and people have a very hard time letting go of snippets of information a wine person once told them in the 1980s (times have changed, Dad, times have changed).

It’s also a subject with an unholy amount of rabbit holes, which means it’s tempting to hold onto any little scrap of information that seemingly makes choosing wine easier.

On the other side of the coin, there are some incredibly important things that would make your wine-buying choices infinitely easier and better, but few people take notice.

This list is not exhaustive, but it does touch on the things I saw my customers worry about more than they ever should:

Do we cork them or screw them?

Which one is better? was a subject of endless fascination for many of my customers and clients.

There is no easy answer here but one thing to note is that much of this debate is linked to politics and culture.

Portugal for instance, is home to over a third of the world’s cork production so almost all their wines will be under cork. It’s damn near unpatriotic to choose anything else.

And in the 1970s, cork suppliers prioritised European winemakers, leaving places like Australia and New Zealand with the bad stuff that ruined their wines. That’s why you find so many Antipodean wines switched to screw caps.

My two cents? If you are drinking young, to-be-drunk-soon wines, both cork and screwcap are fine. Even if you’re ageing wine, some age wonderfully under screwcap. I recently drank the last bottle of some 2005 Australian Semillon I bought 15 years ago, and it was beyond excellent.

My third cent? This simply isn’t something to worry about much.

Etiquette doesn’t have to be A Thing