Wine Knowledge for Bartenders with Monika Elling

While Bartenders can not be expected to have Sommelier level wine education, we certainly need to be knowledgeable about what we are serving and how to make recommendations to our guests.

We chat with Monika Elling, author of Wine 123: All you need to know about wine in 90 minutes or less

It’s the Bartender Journey Podcast #233. Listen with the audio player on this page, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Android or Stitcher Radio.

Over the past 232 episodes of Bartender Journey we’ve only talked about wine once.  Way back in show #105 we spoke with Elizabeth Schneider of the Wine For Normal People podcast.

Wine 123 packs a lot of knowledge into a small package that is very easy to digest.

Of course Monika Elling’s Wine 123: All you need to know about wine in 90 minutes or less is our Book of the Week.  It’s a perfect crash course on wine.

For our cocktail of the week I suppose we could have come up with something obscure, but Sangria makes people so happy.  Searching for a way to make it à La Minute, I found the answer on Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s site.

He uses Red Wine, Grand Marnier, Fresh Orange Juice, Simple Syrup and a dash of Angostura bitters.  Brilliant!  It’s delicious and a real crowd pleaser.  I’ll let you experiment with the proportions for making one glass.  Suffice to say, a little bit of each modifier goes a long way - the drink should be mostly wine in the end.  Mix it all in a big wine glass, and an orange, lemon and lime wedge and then add ice at the end.  This same recipe works with white wine, for a nice White Sangria.

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Toast of the Week:

Here’s to water...water devine-

It dews the grapes that give us wine.