Wine Tips-Simple Tips and Ideas
If you are experiencing headaches from red wine, you will be interested to know that it may be the histamine in the wine instead of an allergy to red wine. Red wine has a higher concentration of histamines than white wine does. Red wine contains 20- to 200-fold more histamine than white wine. Histamine-induced headache is a vascular headache, and nitric oxide probably plays a role in its causation. If you know this is an issue for you, then you can reduce the headache impact on you by taking an anti-histamine before you drink the red wine.
Who hasn't had a stubborn cork! If you are trying to get a cork out of a bottle that just will not cooperate then you may consider putting the bottle neck in hot water for ten seconds. When the glass expands your cork becomes easier to remove. Keep in mind that heat changes the flavour of wine-so no more than ten seconds and only the bottle neck!
Flavour and taste are completely dependent on the person, but in our experience, the meals that use foods that are cooked by grilling, roasting, broiling and baking are best cooked and served with oaked wines. While meals that are steamed, poached, braised, or cooked in clear liquids work best with white wine or a red with a more subtle oak taste. Again, I would emphasize to not become dependent on recipes and to explore your tastes. Don't go cheap if you don't like the essence of cheap in your food, because although the alcohol is cooked away, the essence of the flavor of your wine choice stays.
If you have a light colored carpet and . . . oops . . . you spill your red wine on it then grab a bottle of white wine and pour it over the top of the red wine stain. The white against the red takes the red out. A professional carpet cleaner gave us that advice and it works! It has to do with the acid content, which is why citrus based removers work. Also, a mixture of lemon juice and white vinegar works too – but watch out that you don't only dab the stain so that the vinegar odor does not linger.
If you want your wine to chill faster, the freezer is not the place to store it. Try adding 1/4-1/3 cup salt to the ice bucket. You'll find that the cooling process speeds up by about fifty percent faster than water from your faucet.
Two to three weeks is almost too long to store a bottle of wine in the refrigerator. After that period of time, it can begin to lose the flavor that makes it your favorite wine. For champagne and sparkling wine, the time from opening to serving goes down to 24 hours, or overnight. After 24 hours the bubbles go away – The 'fun' is gone!
Do you need to send a wine gift. If you do then make a wine basket and include specialty foods, or wine related accessories like stoppers and corkscrews, crystal ice buckets, tongs, wine totes and bags, crystal glasses, as well as a plethora of other wine-related ideas available to you with a little online research!
Filed under Cooking, Getting Started With Wine, Wine & Food Pairings, Wine Gifts, Wine Storage by on Jul 18th, 2008. Comment. 
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Comments on Wine Tips-Simple Tips and Ideas
Stain Rx is the best stain remover out there. I have been using it on red wine stains since 1969. Just touch it to red wine, iodine, berries (INCLUDING POMEGRANATE), fruit punch, cranberry juice, and the stains disappear in a second. Stains such as mascara, lipstick, blood, balsamic vinegar, vanilla extract and others come out with a little massaging and rinsing. Soak your diamond, gold and platinum jewelry in it for 20 minutes to overnight, you won’t believe it!
By the way, the University of California – Davis did a study on red wine stain removal and the #1, ready to use winner was Stain Rx (a.k.a. Erado-Sol). It killed Wine Away which is available everywhere.
As far as carpeting & upholstery:
I use Stain Rx on carpeting and upholstery all the time and have the method down.
First, I vacuum the entire carpet or piece of upholstery being treated. Then I clean the entire carpet or upholstery with my Hoover Steam-Vac, a carpet shampooer is at least as good, plus, I ONLY use warm water – no detergent at all. The Hoover sprays in water and vacuums it out. For the carpet I use the Steam-Vac and on upholstery I use the Steam-Vac attachments to do this. While the carpet or upholstery is still wet from this step, do the following;
Depending on the size of the stain, put a “dot” of Stain Rx on your fingertip and rub out one stain at a time. After treating a stain, remove all of the soapy residue from that area using the instructions below and go on to the next stain.
HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: You have to remove all of the soapy residue using the attachments from the Steam-Vac, carpet shampooer or a wet/dry shop vacuum. RINSE OUT ALL OF THE SOAPY RESIDUE USING WATER AND THE VACUUM. If you leave Stain Rx in the area, dust will stick forming a gray spot in a few weeks. If this happens, just add water and remove all of the soapy residue.
Let dry and marvel at the job you did.
Great information – Thanks for the info! We have not tried this product yet and cannot recommend it in good faith because of that, but we appreciate any and all information that comes our way and will continue to publish comments containing useful tips, although links will be deleted unless we have used a product ourselves and know of its effectiveness.