"Increase Your Holiday Wine EQ (Entertaining Quotient)" Ash Rajan, Wine Columnist

EQ is Entertaining Quotient. Yes, wine entertaining is an art form much like a recital or a gallery opening. You can expect anticipation, drama, ambience and an evocation of the senses. You simply will never get it right the first time. It’s an adoption curve and it gets better with every entertaining episode.

There’s buzz around wine today that I did not quite observe even five years ago. Today, there’s an earnest interest in wine, bordering on passion, even obsession, and the enduring dynasty of beer and vodka may have to duel it out with wine like Hamilton. Curating wine at a dinner party makes for a great soiree. I realize anything with rules is no fun but a few ‘Ash Rajan Laws’ can shape your wine EQ:

Law No. 1: Lose the plastic glass. Make like Napoleon and exile it to Elba. There’s nothing more vile than serving your company wine in a plastic or a paper cup. Yet I am two-faced enough to look the other way when my hosts at wine curation events use plastic cups for large audiences. But you get my drift. If your guest list swells beyond your cache of glass, rent from a party supplier. They drop, pick-up and save your grace all in one stroke.

Law No. 2: Wine simply loses allure in large gatherings. It’s an intimate potion demanding an intimate setting. My rule of thumb is 40 max, and my nuclear sweet-spot is four couples.

Law No. 3: Fruity Cocktails, mints and toothpaste do not preamble wines well. The wine on your palate will feel much like a Maserati on a slippery, skiddy autobahn coated with oil and slick.

Law No. 4: Do not succumb to the most abused wine etiquette of all: serving reds at room temperature, especially if your room is in Tampa or Zimbabwe. The French, the source of most epicurean rules, meant room temperature of their underground rooms, vaults and mini grottos where they cellared their wine at 55 to 60 degrees. Absent a temperature controlled cellar, play peekaboo with your fridge 20 minutes before you serve. Or switch to lemonade.

Law No. 5: Know the wine you are serving. If you are like me and my friends, know it cold. Know the grape, the winery, the country and some typical tasting notes associated with the wine. As your wine immersion progresses, add region, the appellation the terroir, the wine maker, French or American barrels and other nuances. Banter is currency in the wine republic.

“Not sure what this is. The guy at the wine store recommended it” does not cut it. Enough laws. All rules make Jack a dull boy. Let me take you on a wine dinner journey at my home in the New Vernon section of Harding Township. It may appear syrupy and inspired. No prescription meant, just what works for me.

The Cellar Ritual: I scurry down to my cellar roughly two hours prior to my guests’ arrival. That very ritual is soul numbing between the climate change (55 degrees) in the cellar and the aromas of grape and French barrel from my racks and my degustation (tasting) table. The dusty black beauties slumber with their amber skins like monks in meditation. There’s a pecking order even to wine selection. Pairing the courses from my wife Mariette’s kitchen may upstage my guests’ palate preferences for Cabernet, Bordeaux or Burgundy. Barolo, Barbaresco and Super-Tuscans get to parade if the fare is Italian. Gentle diplomacy prevails in the assembly of my cabinet for the state of the union at my dinner table. A balance is struck between whites, reds and rose’s. Yes, wines can be divas and can be super-sensitive. Champagne is inserted if there is a recent milestone or for no reason.

The Decanting: I subscribe to form and function decanting. The function part is to tame the tight tannins of vintages past and to settle the silt. The form part is to parade an eclectic collection of voluptuous crystal decanters assembled from forays around the globe. And then the art of the pour. Think pirouettes and arabesques from my somewhat un-athletic form. Theater, my friends. Good old theater.

The Staging: Hand-washed Riedel and Zalto goblets sans any watermarks. Dishwashers are notorious for water spots. The occasional Baccarat, Lalique or Moser crystal goblets are lined up like a march past, ensuring they have passed Inspector 13 (Mariette’s) clarity inspection. To add interest to the table, I may try a setting my glass resembling a squadron of Thunderbirds flying in formation with the decanters towering like sinewy architecture from the lost city of Atlantis. You guessed it. Whimsy and ridiculous is my middle name.

Finally, the pour: The staging and the drama is timed like the chimes at Westminster and hence, wasted on tardy guests if they arrive fashionably late. If I were Carnegie Hall, I would have them wait outside until my first aria has ended but that would make me a wine nazi, which I am clearly not. My guests know this and while they may be late for their own wedding they pull up on my platform like Swiss trains. The French-inspired tasting sequence commences with “visual” – pointing the goblet to the heaven for color declaration (dare say red. Aubergine is more like it), “Le Dance” – the ritual of the vigorous twirl to release the aromas, the “olfactory” – the insertion of your nose into the goblet to wax poetic on the aromas released by Le Dance (dare say it smells like grape. Try wet stone.) and finally, “The Degustation” – the actual sipping of the nectar, albeit in petite proportions at first, to facilitate a blender-like swirl with your tongue and the roof of your palate.

This is where you break into lyric and song celebrating the flavor spectrum of the tasting notes that you are experiencing – one guest in my distant past actually said these famous last words: “it tastes like wine” before being exiled forever. I would then let this heavenly juice glide into my mouth like the ball in a pinball machine, setting off bells and whistles of joy as it snakes its way past a thousand sensors to my gullet. I repeat this sipping ritual at least a few times before the plank is put out for the inspired cheese, chorizo and quince companions to climb on deck. If you have read so far, your EQ ship just came in. So get on board for this Holiday Season. Bon Voyage!