Verre de Vin
Creating a wine list is always an exciting part of creating menus in restaurants, albeit a difficult task, but as all tricky jobs, someone has to do it! Let me set the daunting scene: the restaurateur is faced with the hard task of having to sample and taste many different wines, from different regions, grape varieties and price points. Doing it all in one sitting can become a rather testing time, for the palate and for the head! All worth it of course for the pleasure of being able to present a delicious, varied and exciting wine list to offer to our friends and customers when they join us for a meal, or even a drink.
After all the hard work of selecting wines is finished, it is a shame to then reduce people’s choices by the glass, which often means some more unusual and dare I say exciting wines might end up being overlooked. As a restaurant, we wanted to offer that same variety and choice that we would like as customers. This can be tricky though in the context of a restaurant, as how can you keep so many opened wines fresh? As wine lovers, there’s nothing worse than ordering a lovely glass of wine, only to be met with a wine that has passed its best. Luckily, there are now very effective ways for bars and restaurants to keep their wines fresh and inviting.
As many of you will have noticed, as part of our recent refurbishment and re-launch we had a complete re-haul of our bar, turning it into a very sleek, modern and elegant space, fitted with all the latest drinks technology. Part of that is our brand new Verre de Vin by Bermar, a sleek and efficient new system that keeps opened wine fresh for up to 3 weeks. As Victor would say: Eccellente! This has now given us the chance, as a restaurant, to offer what all guests would like: all the choice they want when it comes to a glass of wine. And since our re-launch in January, this is exactly what we have been doing – offering all of our wines – almost 50 – by the glass and by the bottle, from our Victor & Carina Contini Prosecco to our beautiful Barolo Massolino, and all our other wonderful wines in between.
The process is very simple, but concentrate, as here comes the science bit: as soon as you open a bottle, the wine gets into contact with air, which starts a process called oxidation. This is what makes the flavour and the colour of the wine to change, eventually turning it into vinegar. In the case of still wines, our Compact Verre de Vin machine creates a controlled and gentle vacuum in the bottle, by sucking out the air in it in a matter of seconds. This drastically reduces the amount of air with which the wine comes into contact and slows down the oxidation process. In the case of sparkling wines, on top the worry of oxidation, we also need to think about the wine losing its sparkle. For this, Bermar’s Verre de Vin gently fills the bottle of sparkling wine with an infusion of carbon dioxide, which keeps the sparkle in the wine and at the same time keeps the wine safe from oxidizing.
So when coming in to order a glass of wine or indeed a beautiful glass of Bellavista Franciacorta, you can safely trust that the wine will be as delicious as the winemaker intended it to be.
Salute!
