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We’ve all heard a few myths in our time regarding wine so I thought I’d share a conversation I had with a friend on Sunday evening.
Seeing as it is the spirit of goodwill and festivities, we decided to go for a gin or three to celebrate our December birthdays.
The conversation came around to wine and she told me she couldn’t really eat stuff with yeast in it and therefore just drank gin because of the fermentation process in wine.
I looked at her like she had two heads as she has just had a case of Champagne delivered.
I asked her will she be drinking the Champagne to which she responded "of course, Champagne isn’t fermented …………………
(I obviously then explained it in fact goes through a fermentation process TWICE 
)
So, let hear them, the best wine myths you’ve heard …
?
Where in Bacchus’ name did she think the alcohol came from?!!
The magic Champagne gods??? Her nutritionist person “told her so!”
- Sulphites in wine cause headaches
- Deeper the punt the better the wine
“I had 3 1/2 bottles of Chateau Slayer ‘Angel of Death’ Cabernet Onanadon last night and this morning my head felt like it was raining blood, how can that be?”
“Probably the sulphites”
This sounds amazing. I WANT SOME.
Usually said whilst eating dried fruit.
Myth Busters…
After a great water-ski and wine tasting/buying holiday to the Beaujolais , I convinced myself that drinking any of Beaujolais Villages and Cru Beaujolais would not give me a next day headache…extreme tiredness yes but no hangover ( bad head)… I did this holiday for eight consecutive years, and the outcome still only produced tiredness. !!! 
Confirms all my prejudices about ‘nutritionists’, particularly self appointed ones…
If I had a penny for every time … 
A friend opened a bottle to ‘let it breathe’. I suggested that not much air was getting to it through that neck, and that if he wanted it to breathe, he could pour a glass or, better still, decant it.
“No - you only need to decant a wine if it’s corked.”
Oh.
Now a former friend? 
Reminds me of all the times I’ve heard someone proclaim a wine to be corked because… there are bits of cork floating in the glass. Luckily I have a magic tool to cure this type of cork taint. I call it a ‘sieve’.
Yep! Turned out this is what he was getting at, which meant that a brief exchange about air and wine ended up opening a can of TCA worms. He was adamant that he was right. I started explaining but soon gave up, shrugged and drank some wine instead.
Still friends! But it’s best when we drink beer together.
I read that unscrupulous vignerons picked their harvest within (I think) 3 weeks of spraying with pesticides/fungicides and that there was chemical residue still on the grape skins. Hence, the manufacturers advisory note to wait a few weeks. But if inclement weather was then forecast, the harvest would begin, and the residue would be entrained within the grape must and make its way into the bottle. These substances were said to be headache inducing.
I will confess to have suffered a few spectacular headaches while only imbibing a couple of glasses in pubs or restaurants where I was unaware of the wines origin. This period only lasted a couple of years or maybe I was only at risk on a relatively low number of occasions.
Or was it my imagination as I was prone at the time to tension headaches due to my job, which I got over quite quickly? Who knows? I will go with the residue!!
I was once told that putting a teaspoon in an opened bottle of fizz helped it maintain its sparkle. Now I know this to be nonsense but I still have to stop myself from doing it (on the rare occasion that there’s unfinished fizz in my house).
My mother still does this 
!
I thought it was to help an overly lively sparkler settle down!
Not ‘myth’ as such, but I’m bored to death of hearing some friends saying that “rosé is a girly drink”… 
Conflating a ‘colour’ with a particular ‘gender’ is extremely passé. And clearly, none of them had ever had a Tavel!
!