Patio Perfect: Essential Wine Tips and Tools for Summer

Join sommelier Erin as she shares her essential wine tips and tools for summer wine enjoyment. Discover practical and fun ways to elevate your outdoor wine experiences this summer, from wine bottle sleeves to freezies. In this episode, you’ll also learn how to keep your wine at the perfect temperature and explore unique summer wine hacks, so grab a glass and your favorite deck chair and listen in.

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Transcript

Erin: 0:00

If you love to sit outside during the summer and enjoy a glass of wine on warm summer days and evenings, then today's episode is for you I'm here to share some of my top tips for enjoying wine during the summer, along with a few of my must have tools that I always keep on hand. So whether you're planning about your barbecue picnic in the park, or just relaxing on your own patio, I've got you covered. So if you're ready to learn about my tips and tools for summer, let's get started and dive right into today's episode. Hi everyone. And welcome to the wine talk, talk. I'm your host, my Erin Rosar and I'm so happy that you're here with me today. If we haven't met before, it's a lovely to have you here. And if we have welcome back now, for those of you who are new, you should know that I've been a professional smile for over 20 years now. And it's my passion and my privilege to make learning about why not only fun and easy, but also practical. I want to make sure you leave every single episode with some real life practical tips that you can put to use right away to help you find wines that you're going to love and enjoy, and be able to share with family and friends. I want you to think of me as your very own practical smile. And on that note, the tips and tools that I'm sharing with you are practical and they are my own, this is what I use in my home when I'm entertaining, when I have people over and I'm excited to be sharing them with you. You can also treat this episode a bit of a gift list. If you have a wine lover that you has a birthday or an event coming up, some of the tips and tools that I'm going to be sharing with you on this episode, make really good gift ideas for wine lovers. So just putting it out there might be helpful. So let's get started with some of the tools that I always have on hand at my house to help with entertaining or enjoying wine. Outside. And a lot of that has to do with keeping the wine at the right temperature, because we know that summer can be hot. And we know that if the wine is too hot, it gets kind of flabby and lazy and. Is it at its best. And if it's too cold, then it's really tight and you're also not getting the full experience. So keeping wine at its ideal temperature during warm summer days is one of the trickiest parts of dining Alfresco, if you will. So here's some tools that are going to help you. That's something I always have on hand. And I usually have a couple of them. They're always in my freezer and those are wine bottles sleeps. Now these are the sleeves. You'll see them. Some are very fancy and have patterns on them. Some are really simple. But they are just something that fits right over top of the wine bottle will usually has sort of a string or a tie at the top so that it can stay in place, but you keep them in your freezer and then you just bring them out when you need them. And you're going to put those on top of the bottle and it's going to help, especially if you're outside at a picnic or dining outside. Now I do want to caveat while the wind sleeve is a fantastic way to keep your wine at an ideal temperature. It's not going to quickly chill that bottle down if you've just happened to pick it up from the store. So wine sleeves are great for bottles that have already been chilled down. So they're going to help maintain a temperature. But if you're thinking they're going to chill a bottle of wine quickly for you, they're really not. Yes. Still chill, wind down slightly, but there's a lot of volume in that bottle for that chiller as. As much as it's surrounded. To be able to work its way down. So I like to use them on bottles that are already chilled, but if you're going to leave them for a while, you can do a bit of experiment and everyone's sleep can be a little bit different and see how long it takes. But I use them on bottles that are already cooled down. My next tip and tool for you is tinfoil. I always have tinfoil on hand. Obviously it's a kitchen staple, but when you're talking about wine, tinfoil is a great way to cover up bottles of wine. if you've lost a cork or it's falling apart when you've opened up a bottle or you've opened up a bottle of sparkling wine. And you just need to cover it up. Tinfoil fits very tightly on top of the wine bottle top. It's also good to make sure that no bugs or anything get into your bottle. So tinfoil is just such a handy thing to have around, but it's a really easy way to close up a bottle that. that you don't have a closure for, or an, especially with sparkling wines. That can be a little tricky. If you don't have a sparkling wine cap, tinfoil is your best friend. Next is maybe a bit unique and that is freezies. I always have freezies on hand and you're probably thinking Erin. Great. We all love a pop school. Why wouldn't you have freezies in the summer? Fantastic. But freezies make great independent ice cubes that you can put into a glass of wine. So if you are having, white wine and you want to keep it chilled and you're not someone who wants to put ice in their wine, then a Freezie is fantastic. Obviously you're not going to open it. You're just going to use it as a bit of an ice stick, but get the small ones. It just fit perfectly in a wine glass and they're kind. Fun. But, then people can take them in and out of their wine, depending on how cold they want it. But freezies are great independent ice cubes. If it's a very warm day and you're enjoying wine out on the patio. Now on the same wavelength in regards to ice in wine. And if you listened to last week's episode, where I talked about five red wine styles that you can chill for summer. So if you haven't listened to that and you want to go back and find out about those five red styles that you can show her summer that are delicious. But in that episode, I talked a little bit about putting ice in wine. Now I know some people will frown upon it. And why would you do this if putting ice and wine makes you happy, keep doing you, and if you enjoy it fantastic. But I would suggest though, is. Free some of your favorite wine styles put just ice cube. Tray is filled with your favorite wine and then make ice cubes, put them in Ziploc baggies. You could have a baggie for red, white, and Rosar. Styles, depending on what you like to keep chilled, but by freezing the wine, what that means is that it's not going to dilute the wine to the point that just putting a water, ice cube is going to. So if you are a person you really enjoy sort of putting ice in your wine, this is something you enjoy to do. Then I would highly recommend just freezing some ice cubes of the wine you like and having that on hand and put that inside. So fantastic and easy. And like I said, just have a Ziploc baggies, red, white Rosar. In the fridge. And you have some ready to go ice cubes. Whenever you're looking for a chilled glass. My next tool and tip is paper coasters. And again, this is about keeping bugs out of your wine. When you're outside, there are fancy wine glass screens that you can get, and didn't foil will work here as well. But if you just get some heavier paper coaster, sometimes this is enough as well, but. If you're going to be sitting out and we know that mines have sugar in them and they are definitely going to attract some little Beasties if you will. So having just a paper coaster or something that people can have on top of their glass, if they're sitting at the table for awhile, then this is a great thing just to have on hand. So I usually keep a pack of just heavy cardboard coasters round, and we can put them on glasses while we're sitting outside. If we'd like to. My next tip is about plastic or stemless, glassware. These are your friends. If you're dining outside, especially if you are in an area with grass, you don't want to have an accident and have a glass break and then be worrying about little feet or big feet walking on the grass and finding a piece of broken glass that you missed picking up. So the stemless glass, where are great, they're a little bit more sturdy, but if you are going to be somewhere where. There may be bare feet. There are some fantastic plastic glasses out there right now. And so if you have a patio set, but I'm also a fan, I have a thicker glass style of glass that we use outside. That is just a bit more sturdy and I'm not worried then about barefoot or see a little feet hitting some glass. Should we have an accident? And one gets broken. My next tip for you. And this is just always handy to remember is when you're chilling wine. And you're probably gonna run into a scenario where you need to get a bottle of chill down quickly. You're having some people over in the clocks got away from you. Then, if you put a bottle of wine in the freezer, Make sure that you put the timer on the stove or timer on your watch or your Alexa or whatever it is, but you're going to want to make sure that you don't forget about that bottle of wine in your freezer, because if you do, it's going to freeze. And frozen wine means you probably could have a broken bottle because as that bottle freezes the water inside expands, and that's not going to be fun to clean up. So just remember if you do put one in a freezer, usually I do 30 minutes at a time. No more, but 30 minutes set a timer. Don't forget about it. So help for reminder there, we all do it. Sometimes we've all lived with. Wine exploded in the freezer, or I know lots of my friends have, I definitely have made this mistake. So calling it out, especially as we go into the warmer summer months. Now in regards to a few extra tools I always have on hand as well. And that is corkscrews. I have at least three in the house at all times. They all also have a little knife on the end. So depending on type of corkscrew, you like, but I have old school waiter corkscrews so I know some people are very fancy ones are battery operated ones. I have old school corkscrews but also, all of mine have a serrated knife to be able to get the foil off the bottles really easily. But. You don't want to just find yourself with one corkscrew. In the house. And if you do have a fancy one and it needs batteries and then it's out, so definitely have a few extra corkscrews on hand, same goes for bottle openers. So depending on your corkscrew, most of them will be a bottle opener as well. But if that is not make sure you have one, we are seeing a resurgence of. old school need a bottle opener, different beers, sodas, and ready to drink styles in a puddles like that. So make sure you have a bottle opener on hands. You're not all trying to figure out how you're going to open up that bottle because you thought it was a screw cap. And my last tool and tip, if you will, that I must share with you. I always have a decanter in a pitcher on hand. So sometimes you just don't want the bottle on the table or, um, sometimes you don't want to take the bottle outside. So I keep a nice picture around as well as a few different styles of decanters. And this is going to be personal choice, but sometimes it's nice just to kind of pour your wine into that. You can use a decanter for red, white and Rosie styles. It's all good. And you can keep the wine in there. Some of them are beautiful sort of round ball, glass closures on top of it. Pictures. We'll have a lid that again, keep a little buggies out, but sometimes just to have the wine on the table in a different type of container is pretty as well, especially if you're having a candlelit dinner on the patio in the evening. So I keep a few decanters and pitchers around So there you have my summer essential wine tips and tools. If you will, these are things you're going to find at my house. As a recap, we talked about paper coasters. We talked about using freezies as wine ice cubes. We talked about freezing wine styles and keeping baggies in the freezer. So they're always on hand. If you do want to put some ice in your wine. We talked about stemless and plastic glassware. Wine bottles, sleeves, extra corkscrews and tinfoil. I'm telling you, tinfoil is your best friend. If you haven't sort of been using it, it really is just such a handy thing to have around in the kitchen. So I hope that you've enjoyed some fun tips, a bit of a different type of episode today, but I'm going to ask a few questions this week, just about summer entertaining and I thought it'd be fun to share with you some of the tools and tricks that I use on our patio. Now as always, if you have any questions or comments about today's episode, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me@hellowinegirlacademy.com. Or find me on Instagram or Tik TOK at wine girl academy. and if you are new here and you haven't had a chance yet to do your wine pallet personality quiz. You're going to find the link below in the show. Notes is the, my fun signature quiz. It's very fast. You're going to answer some easy, fun questions. And at the end of it, you're going to find out what your one pallet personality is. And get an entire guide, all about your personal wine, pellet personality that comes with wine styles. You're going to enjoy as well as helpful shopping words to help you easily find wines that you were going to love and enjoy. Also, you're going to find a link below to the freebie page. I put together a new fun summer wine. Bingo. So there's two bingo cards you can download and play during the summer. If you're looking for a bit of a fun checklist for yourself, you can do it with your friends, whatever you'd like, but you'll find the link for. That in the show notes as well now, if you haven't had a chance yet to officially follow along, please do new episodes come out every Tuesday. And on that note, I want to wish you all a wonderful week to yours, to you by now.