Except for the wine waiter in a restaurant -- always an inscrutable plenipotentiary unto himself, the genii with the keys to unlock the gates of the wine world are one's dealer, and the foreign shipper or negociant who in turn supplies him.
In instances where both of these are persons or firms with integrity, the situation is ideal.
It may, on occasion, be anything but that.
However, by cultivating a wine dealer and accepting his advice, one will soon enough ascertain whether he has any knowledge of wines (as opposed to what he may have been told by salesmen and promoters) and, better yet, whether he has a taste for wine.
Again, by spreading one's purchases over several wine dealers, one becomes familiar with the names and specialties of reputable wine dealers and shippers abroad.
This is important because, despite all the efforts of the French government, an appreciable segment of France's export trade in wines is still tainted with a misrepresentation approaching downright dishonesty, and there are many too many negociants who would rather turn a sou than amass a creditable reputation overseas.

A good negociant or shipper will not only be the man or the firm which has cornered the wines from the best vineyards, or the best parts of them;
he may also be the one who makes and bottles the best blends -- sound wines from vineyards generally in his own district.
These are the wines the French themselves use for everyday drinking, for even in France virtually no one drinks the Grands Crus on a meal-to-meal basis.
The Grands Crus are expensive, and even doting palates tire of them.
And certainly, in the case of the beginner or the comparatively uninitiated wine drinker, the palate and the capacity for appreciation will not be ready for the Grands Crus as a steady diet without frequent recourse to crus of less renown.
There is nothing infra dig about a good blend from a good shipper.
Some of them are very delicious indeed, and there are many good ones exported -- unfortunately, along with others not so good, and worse.
Consultation with a reputable wine dealer and constant experimentation -- "steering ever from the known to the unknown" -- are the requisites.

Wine waiters are something else again;
especially if one is travelling or dining out a great deal, their importance mounts.
Most of them, the world over, operate on the same principle by which justice is administered in France and some other Latin countries: the customer is to be considered guilty of abysmal ignorance until proven otherwise, with the burden of proof on the customer himself.
Now the drinking of wine (and happily so!
) is for the most part a recondite affair, for manifestly, if everyone in the world who could afford the best wines also liked them, the supply would dry up in no time at all.
This is the only valid, and extenuating, argument that may be advanced in defense of the reprehensible attitude of the common wine waiter.
A really good wine waiter is, paradoxically, the guardian (and not the purveyor) of his cellar against the Visigoths.
Faced, on the one hand, with an always exhaustible supply of his best wines, and on the other by a clientele usually equipped with inexhaustible pocketbooks, it is a wonder indeed that all wine waiters are not afflicted with chronic ambivalence.
The one way to get around them -- short of knowing exactly what one wants and sticking to it -- is to frequent a single establishment until its wine waiter is persuaded that one is at least as interested in wine as in spending money.
Only then, perhaps, will he reveal his jewels and his bargains.

Wine bought from a dealer should ideally be allowed to rest for several weeks before it is served.
This is especially true of red wines, and a practice which, though not always practicable, is well worth the effort.
It does no harm for wine to stand on end for a matter of days, but in terms of months and years it is fatal.
Wine stored for a long time should be on its side;
otherwise, the cork dries and air enters to spoil it.
When stacking wine on its side in a bin, care should always be taken to be sure there is no air bubble left next to the cork.
Fat bottles, such as Burgundies, have a way of rolling around in the bin and often need little props, such as a bit of cardboard or a chip of wood, to hold them in the proper reclining posture.
Too much dampness in the cellar rots the corks, again with ill effects.
The best rule of thumb for detecting corked wine (provided the eye has not already spotted it) is to smell the wet end of the cork after pulling it: if it smells of wine, the bottle is probably all right;
if it smells of cork, one has grounds for suspicion.

Seasonal rises or drops in temperature are bad for wine: they age it prematurely.
The ideal storage temperature for long periods is about fifty-five degrees, with an allowable range of five degrees above or below this, provided there are no sudden or frequent changes.
Prolonged vibration is also undesirable;
consequently, one's wine closet or cellar should be away from machines or electrically driven furnaces.
If one lives near a subway or an express parkway, the solution is to have one's wines stored with a dealer and brought home a few at a time.
Light, especially daylight, is always bad for wine.

All in all, though, there is a good deal of nonsense expended over the preparations thought necessary for ordinary wine drinking;
many people go to extreme lengths in decanting, chilling or warming, or banishing without further investigation any bottle with so much as a slightly suspicious cork.
No one should wish to deny these purists the obvious pleasure they derive from all this, and to give fair warning where warning is due, no one who becomes fond of wines ever avoids acquiring some degree of purism!
But the fact remains that in most restaurants, including some of the best of Paris and Bordeaux and Dijon, the bottle is frankly and simply brought from the cellar to the table when ordered, and all the conditioning or preparation it ever receives takes place while the chef is preparing the meal.
A white wine, already at cool cellar temperature, may be adequately chilled in a bucket of ice and water or the freezing compartment of a refrigerator (the former is far preferable) in about fifteen minutes;
for those who live in a winter climate, there is nothing better than a bucket of water and snow.
Though by no means an ideal procedure, a red wine may similarly be brought from the cellar to the dining room and opened twenty minutes or so before serving time.
It may be a bit cold when poured;
but again, as one will have observed at any restaurant worth its salt, wine should be served in a large, tulip-shaped glass, which is never filled more than half full.
In this way, red wine warms of itself quite rapidly -- and though it is true that it may not attain its potential of taste and fragrance until after the middle of the meal (or the course), in the meantime it will have run the gamut of many beguiling and interesting stages.
The only cardinal sin which may be committed in warming a wine is to force it by putting it next to the stove or in front of an open fire.
This invariably effaces any wine's character, and drives its fragrance underground.

It should not be forgotten that wines mature fastest in half-bottles, less fast in full bottles, slowly in Magnums -- and slower yet in Tregnums, double Magnums, Jeroboams, Methuselahs, and Imperiales, respectively.
Very old red wines often require several hours of aeration, and any red wine, brought from the cellar within half an hour of mealtime, should be uncorked and allowed some air.
But white wines never!
White wines should be opened when served, having been previously chilled in proportion to their sweetness.
Thus, Sauternes or Barsacs should be very cold;
a Pouilly-Fuisse or a Chablis somewhat less cold.
Over-chilling is an accepted method for covering up the faults of many a cheap or poor white wine, especially a dry wine -- and certainly less of a crime than serving a wine at a temperature which reveals it as unattractive.

The fragrance and taste of any white wine will die a lingering death when it is allowed to warm or is exposed for long to the air.
To quote Professor Saintsbury: "The last glass of claret or Burgundy is as good as the first;
but the first glass of Chateau d'Yquem or Montrachet is a great deal better than the last"!
This does not mean, though, that a red wine improves with prolonged aeration: there is a reasonable limit -- and wines kept over to the next meal or the next day, after they have once been opened, are never as good.
If this must be done, they should always be corked and kept in a cool place;
it should be remembered that their lasting qualities are appreciably shorter than those of milk.

A few red wines, notably those of the Beaujolais, are better consumed at cellar temperature.
By tradition, a red wine should be served at approximately room temperature -- if anything a little cooler -- and be aged enough for the tannin and acids to have worked out and the sediment have settled well.
Thus, red wine must, if possible, never be disturbed or shaken;
very old red wine is often decanted so that the puckering, bitter elements which have settled to the bottom will not be mingled with the wine itself.
A tug-of-war between an old bottle and an inefficient corkscrew may do as much harm as a week at sea.
The cork should be pulled gradually and smoothly, and the lip of the bottle wiped afterward.

Many people use wicker cradles for old red wine, lifting the bottle carefully from the bin into the cradle and eventually to the table, without disturbing the sediment.
Another school frowns on such a shortcut, and insists that after leaving the bin an old red wine should first stand on end for several days to allow the sediment to roll to the very bottom, after which the bottle may be gently eased to a tilted position on its side in the cradle.

In France, when one wishes to entertain at a restaurant and serve truly fine old red wines, one visits the restaurant well ahead of time, chooses the wines and, with the advice of the manager and his chef, builds the menu around them.
The wine waiter will see to it that the bottles are taken from the bin and opened at least in time to warm and aerate, preferably allowed to stand on end for as long as possible and, perhaps in the case of very old wines, be decanted.
Decanting old wine aerates it fully;
it may also be -- practically speaking -- a matter of good economy.
For, in the process of decanting, the bottle is only tilted once instead of several or more times at the table: hence, a minimum of the undesirable mixture of wine and dregs.

Though there are many exceptions, which we have noted in preceding pages, white wine is as a rule best consumed between two and six years old, and red wines, nowadays, between three and ten.
Red wines of good years tend to mature later and to keep longer;
the average claret is notably longer-lived than its opposite number, red Burgundy.
Some clarets do not come into their own until they are ten or fifteen years of age, or even more.
If a red Bordeaux of a good name and year is bitter or acid, or cloying and muddy-tasting, leave it alone for a while.
Most of the wines of Beaujolais, on the other hand, should be drunk while very young;
and Alsatians may be.