Besides wine openers, there are many wine accessories that are used for serving wine. Some of us go as far as use the wine aerator or chiller, but the really serious wine drinkers might even use a wine journal.
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Foil cutter
This is a small accessory that often comes with the wine opener or corkscrew. But there are some cheap corkscrews that don’t include this so you might want to buy one. It gets the foil off the bottle cap in one twist so you don’t have to tear and pick at the foil.
Wine glasses
Stemware, they’re called. Because wine glasses sit on long, thin stems for you to hold and swirl the wine around in the glass.
Wine stopper
Sometimes we don’t finish a whole bottle at once, so we’d put the bottle in the refrigerator or wine cooler to keep for later on. A wine stopper is used to close the bottle if the original cork is difficult to put back in, or if it’s broken/pierced.
Wine stoppers are usually made of cork, rubber, or plastic, with simple or fancy tops.
Wine collar
Also called the drip ring. This is a collar or ring-like accessory to put around the neck of the bottle before pouring the wine. Any drip that occurs at the mouth of the bottle after the pouring will be absorbed by the wine collar and this prevents staining the table cloth.
Wine aerator
If you pour wine through a wine aerator into the glass, air will be mixed into the wine to aerate it for better taste. This is an accessory for speeding up wine aeration without going through the process of letting wine ‘breath’ or swirling before drinking.
Wine decanter
A container used to serve wine. The wine decanter is designed with a flared bottom for better wine aeration and a stilted opening for easier pouring. Not so commonly used nowadays because we have wine aerators and wine collars.
Wine rack
A rack specially designed for storing wine bottles on their side and slightly slanted toward the corks. This position will prevent the corks from drying and becoming brittle, and prevent spoiling the wine from oxygen that enters through dried corks.
Wine chiller
This is traditionally a container made of stainless steel used to chill a bottle of wine by putting the whole wine bottle inside and filling the free space with ice. Now there are electric wine chillers for chilling a bottle of wine quickly for serving.
Wine cooler
A refrigerator-like appliance with wine-bottle-compatible racks inside to keep bottles of wine cool. Comes in various sizes from countertop models to large models that can fit about 30 bottles.
Wine journal
The really serious wine drinkers will keep a wine journal to record the details of wine such as vintage, region, price, date, place it was drank/name of restaurant, and some even fix the label in.
