Wine 101

To enjoy a bottle of wine, all you really need is the bottle, a corkscrew, and enough wine glasses for however many people you're splitting the bottle with. It really is as simple as that. But just because the number of tools you need to get into wine is minimal, that does not mean that there aren't a lot of other products out there that could pique your interest.

We love buying wine accessories and other wine gadgets as they are often fun to use even if they aren't quite the most practical of the bunch. In this guide, we wanted to share some of our thoughts on the products we've purchased so far to help you determine if you should pick them up for your own personal collection.

Notes: We've owned a version of every item featured in this guide. Some links may go to similar products if the one we own specifically is no longer available. Some of the products below may only be recommended in select scenarios as well.

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If you are looking to build a wine cellar at home, it may seem pretty simple on the surface. Build a sufficient capacity for storage, stock it with ageable bottles, and, if you want aged wines, wait for the power of time to work its magic.

This is, of course, a pretty sound approach that many wine collectors take.

But there is an inherent problem here that should be obvious- what if you want to drink aged wine now? There are only two ways you can enjoy an old bottle of wine and that is either to buy an old bottle or put a young bottle of wine in your cellar and wait it out.

If you're like us and don't want to wait 30-some years to crack open an aged wine from that case you just bought, you now have a stocking issue on your hands. This is inherently a math problem to balance aged wines on hand with younger (and often significantly more affordable) wines to age. Thankfully, we're both former engineers and have thoroughly thought this one out.

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It is hard to beat a great food and wine pairing. There is something about how the flavors on your tongue change with a perfect match that just makes us want more, and can sometimes elevate a meal into something far more than the sum of its parts.

But how do you improve your chances of that happening? We've certainly had many meals where a wine pairing fell flat and others where the wine was simply not at a match at all.

In this guide, we wanted to share a few of our favorite methods to increase your chances of having a stellar pairing with your next meal!

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One of our biggest frustrations with the world of wine comes in the format of wine reviews. Not in the way that a sommelier or critic describes the wine (that we love), but rather is in the often non-sensical points system that is used to try and quantify individual bottles.

The problem we have is that the points system has almost zero context when you really stop to think about it.

When you see a bottle with an acclaimed 92, what does that even mean? On a 100 point scale, numerically that sounds quite high and therefore should be very good. But how is that different from a 91 or a 93? Odds are good you don't know that particular critic well enough to understand their nuanced system between points. Likewise, why is it rare to never see anything below an 85 when researching wines? If 85 is near the bottom for a critic's range, then wouldn't a 92 be more of an average score? We could go on.

We knew our scale had to be different, and after thinking about it for quite some time, we settled on an easy-to-follow five point scale.

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