What Is Quaffing Wine And What Does It Mean?

Have you ever heard of quaffing wine? Are you confused and don’t know what it means? This guide aims to bring light upon the matter.

Quaffing wine typically refers to a wine that is too unsophisticated to consider for a wine tasting but too good not to quaff. Due to the wide acceptance of the term, quaffing wine could describe anything from a cheap supermarket bottle to a more expensive wine produced in a less exceptional year.

Now the mystery’s all solved; you might be wondering how to choose the best quaffing wine. Here are my tips to wine quaffing either alone, with your partner, or with your friends.

Top 5 Wine Quaffing Tips

#1 Don’t go for the most expensive stuff

Unless you’re an expert, chances are you won’t really appreciate the flavors and aromas in an expensive vintage more than you would appreciate an average wine. Learning how to taste wine takes practice, and for us, common mortals, a less exclusive bottle could be more than sufficient to quaff on after work.

This doesn’t, however, mean you should buy the cheapest stuff out there. A good average is a bottle costing you around $8-$10.

Pay attention though to international wines. An average bottle coming from France or Italy could be much more expensive than a local average bottle. By sticking to the same price tag, you could actually pay too much for a very cheap wine that won’t bring any pleasure of quaffing.

#2 You don’t really need a corked wine

Now, before thinking a corked wine is just fancy, it’s not. Every respectable wine is corked because the cork does a better job in maintaining intact the characteristics of a good vintage. The wine not only must be corked, but a good wine always comes with a natural cork and not with a synthetic one.

That said, if you’re just looking for a quaffing wine, a bottle that comes with a screwed cap is perfectly acceptable.

For wine quaffing, this type of bottle comes in fact with more advantages, as you’ll be able to just preserve any leftover wine for a day or two without using a bottle stopper. Moreover, the screwed cap does a better job in keeping air out of the bottle, which means your wine will last for long.

#3 Pick a diet quaffing wine

If you want to stay in shape and still indulge yourself a glass or two of the heavenly drink, it could be wiser to quaff diet wine.

Okay, I know there is no such thing as diet wine. But some wines could be better for your diet than others.

In broad lines, wine is very caloric. Sweet wines are more caloric than dry ones, and the same goes for those wines with a higher alcohol concentration as opposed to the ones with lower alcohol content.

So, if you’re on a diet or just want to stay in shape, get a dry wine with low alcohol content. Some wines can have as little as 8% alcohol concentration and a very low concentration of sugars as well. Regarding the difference between red and white, just go for the one you enjoy the most.

#4 Don’t fill your glass

Even if we’re talking about quaffing, the wine must still be appreciated. Filling your glass to the top won’t do any good to your wine. The best thing is to pour about 100 milliliters of wine in the glass, so you can have plenty of space to swirl and smell it.

Perhaps this could seem like too snob at first, but that’s a good start to learn wine tasting instead of wine quaffing.

One hundred milliliters of wine should also be enough for the evening, but if you really insist on drinking more, it is wiser to pour yourself several glasses instead of just one.

#5 Learn how to read wine labels but don’t get stuck on it

There are good wines, vintage wines, young wines, and in the end, bad wines. If you’re serious about wine quaffing, you’ll have to learn how to read a label and also check which wine years were the best before buying.

For instance, 2010 was a great vintage year, but 2012 was a stellar one. Of course, a good year in the US could be a bad year elsewhere in the world.

Luckily, all this info is readily available online, and all you have to do is a quick check based on the region and year.

And now that you know what is wine quaffing and what it means, all you have to do is go and get a good quaffing bottle for you to enjoy. A last quick tip from me, if you’re unsure which wine to get, become a member of a wine club. They’ll then just send you excellent quaffing wine for you to enjoy until you learn the mysteries of wine tasting.