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As with any kind of review or appraisal on any product or service you might come across, the main aim is to help consumers when they are deciding whether or not to purchase a particular product.

As you well know, there are reviews and appraisals made by users themselves which, of course, are important in their own right, such as the ones published on Vivino. However, when it comes to wine, we also have experts who assess wines from around the world, much like how restaurants are awarded Michelin stars, giving them a rating in line with certain predefined scales.

These ratings are published in specialist wine guides, magazines and newspapers, and they have a range of different scales. The most widely used one is the American system which rates wines from 50 to 100 points (50 is the lowest rating and 100 is the highest).

Now we’ll take an in-depth look at the different systems, experts and publications!

Suckling is a journalist from Los Angeles who was the editor of Wine Spectator for over 20 years – we’ll come back to that publication later on. He’s had his own website since 2010, which has set the benchmark for wine ratings for many people, even Robert Parker himself.

Suckling claims to have done blind tastings of over 200,000 over the course of his career. His ratings are also based on the American system, but giving them the following weightings:

• Colour: 15
• Aroma: 25
• Structure: 25
• Overall impression: 35

James Suckling gave our El Coto Crianza 2017 a rating of 92 and described it as “a delicious and fruity red with notes of plum, chocolate and vanilla. With a medium-to-full body and chewy and well-rounded tannins.”

Founded back in 1982, Wine & Spirits is published seven times per year and read by over 200,000 people in the wine community in the USA, as well as many other wine lovers around the world.

This guide just gave our El Coto Crianza 2017 a rating of 92, stating that “it’s aroma of fresh aniseed is ideal for a dish of tripe slow-cooked in red wine. It has a hint of weightless richness to it that allows for the peppery and cherry-skin flavours to last through the dark and earthy tannins with slight bitter hints of oak with a fresh finish.”

Last but not least, we have Guía Peñín, “the most complete guide to Spanish wines in the world”, in their own words. They taste over 11,500 wines every year!

Their rating process follows the American rating system, and the taster builds their rating based on all of the visual, aromatic and taste sensations. Their ratings are:

• 95-100 Extraordinary
• 90-94 Outstanding
• 85-89 Very good
• 80-84 Acceptable
• 70-79 Unremarkable but not faulty
• 60-69 Not recommended
• 50-59 Faulty

We hope you’ve learnt something new. While you’re here, take a look at this unmissable article:

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With a degree in Chemistry from the University of La Rioja, Vanesa García is one of the most important women in the Barón de Ley Group. At the age of 43, she’s spent half her life in the group. She has been working for the business for 22 years, specialising in the wine sector.

Vanesa, how did you start out in the Barón de Ley Group?

Well, I started off as an intern! I did my degree in Chemistry and, at first, I was looking to work at a laboratory, but I joined the group in 1999 and I’m still here.

I started out in the oenology laboratory. Over the years, various opportunities to get promoted came up and I didn’t think twice about taking them on. That’s why, after moving through various jobs with different levels of responsibility, growing along the way, I took the job that I’m in now in 2011, as the Head of Quality and Food Safety at the Barón de Ley Group. The winery has always given me the chance to grow.

Were you at all interested in the world of wine beforehand?

As a matter of fact, no. I was very young and it was in the laboratory that I started to get a taste for wine. I’d never really thought about going into the world of oenology. I have to admit that I feel a strong sense of belonging in La Rioja; however, my family has never had much to do with the wine world, apart from drinking it. At home there was always wine in the house.

Your career has developed spectacularly to get you to where you are now. But, in layman’s terms, what is it exactly that you do in your department? What does your work involve?

Basically, what a quality department does is manage and oversee all processes, from the arrival of raw and additional materials to sending out the finished product. We are particularly vigilant when it comes to the bottling process and the materials involved (bottles, corks, labels), because this is the most critical part.

Apart from ensuring that our wines are top-quality, the Quality Department also keeps a close eye on legal compliance and food safety, through an internally recognised and certified management system. Specifically at El Coto, we are subject to “unannounced audits”. This means that, at any time and without any prior warning, an auditor will come along and check our installations and our processes. That’s why what we do on a daily basis is so important.

What do you like most about the sector as a whole and the Barón de Ley Group specifically?

The wine-making process is marvellous and the associated analytical work is hugely interesting. The most rewarding thing about the Barón de Ley Group is its commitment to constantly improving, they’re always ready to invest in new technology and machinery. We have laboratories kitted out with equipment that would be more in place in a university than in a winery. That is what has given me the space to grow and learn so much.

Vanesa, for a long time wine was considered to be exclusively a man’s drink. But in recent decades up until now, this has really changed quite spectacularly. What do you think about women as consumers in the world of wine? Do you think there are still some clichés regarding how women consume wine (as drinkers of rosé, white, sparkling, sweet, etc.)?

Generally speaking, I think there are still some clichés, but I don’t really see it that way among the people I know. You know? The main red-wine drinker in my family is my mother. I think it’s really a matter of taste, not gender.

In my opinion, what does change is wine consumption by age range: the wine you drink at the age of 20 is not the same thing you start drinking as you find your place in the world and discover new products. When you start out, you go for sweeter ones, one’s that are easier to drink, such as semi-sweet or rosé wines.

And in the professional world? Have you ever felt that people have held any prejudice towards you?

We always create stereotypes and, as a matter of fact, I was more prejudiced than anyone, primarily when I fell pregnant. However, I was certain that having children would be part of my personal growth, and that runs parallel to my professional career. I didn’t want to have to give up either of them. The company has always supported me, and here I am! Of course, in my family plans, I’ve always had unconditional support from my husband, and invaluable help from the children’s grandparents!

In the professional world, I’ve always tried to have an interdisciplinary team that manages to get work done even when I’m away, which has helped me to combine these two aspects of my life. I’ve always made an effort to surround myself with top-level professionals, and now my team is made up of women.

Of course, the world of wine is a traditionally masculine world, but I think things are changing. In my case, it’s really rewarding to see that you have put together a team of women who support you and to come across more and more women working as oenologists. Women have a particularly strong presence in the Quality Department, not just in this winery but in many others and in a wide range of sectors.

I don’t think there needs to be more women in the world of wine; I think there needs to be more qualified people, and women are definitely qualified.

Our first idea is to give him a wine that will surely surprise him! And our 875m tinto is one of the most special wines: it is made at our Finca Carbonera estate, the highest altitude vineyard in D.O.Ca Rioja.

And being the highest altitude wine in D.O.Ca Rioja isn’t the only thing that sets it apart: the winemaking process is also special. During alcoholic fermentation, the extraction process is gentle, prioritising the delicate aromatic component of this grape variety. After alcoholic fermentation, the wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in the barrel, striving for perfectly integrated tannins. Finally, it is finished by ageing in new American and French oak barrels for 9 months. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

If you’re allowed to go out to eat in your area and feel like spending some time as a family, one of the best Father’s Day gifts can be a good meal at his favourite restaurant, taking all the necessary precautions, of course. You can’t go wrong with a place you know he loves.

Another option would be to surprise him with a restaurant he’s never tried, and have them prepare a good wine pairing to go with this great Father’s Day present. If they can be from D.O.Ca Rioja, and include some of our El Coto wines, even better!

If you can’t or don’t want to go out, but still want to surprise him, why don’t you be chef for a day! First come up with a menu of dishes you know your dad will love, and don’t be scared to take over the kitchen to surprise him. There no better Father’s Day gift than one made with love!

The next step, after choosing your menu, is to decide which wines to pair it with. Choose at least two or three types, such as El Coto Verdejo, El Coto Crianza or if you want something really special, our Coto Real Reserva.

Plus, our Coto de Imaz Reserva 2015 has just been singled out by the US version of the Robb Report as one of the best D.O.Ca Rioja wines in its price point. And Coto de Imaz Reserva 2016 just got 91 points from Wine Spectator magazine. Have you tried it yet?

The pairing really depends on your menu choices, so if you want to know how to do it right, don’t miss this article:

Even if your dad is far away, or you can’t see each other because of the restrictions in your area, that’s no excuse! One of the best wine gifts for Father’s Day is a pack delivered to him at home by surprise.

That way you can put into action our last plan, each in your own home and following all the rules. Ready for it?

As we said, distance isn’t a barrier to feeling close. And this is something we’ve all learned over the past year. Set up a videochat with your dad on his day and open, together but separately, your favourite wine. Spend some time chatting and toast on screen, reliving all those indelible moments that will always be in your memory.

And if you toast with the pack of wines you had delivered to his house, even better!

If you want more ideas about wine, don’t miss this and other articles on our blog.

Let’s start off our round of definitions with balsamic. When we talk about a balsamic wine, we mean the penetrating aroma and sense of freshness found in some wines. In fact, balsamic notes tend to be found in the tertiary aromas or bouquet, which we’ll look at in more detail below.

These are some of the main balsamic notes you can find in a wine:

• Resin
• Eucalyptus
• Cedar
• Wood
• Pine
• Incense
• Liquorice

A good example of this is our 875m tinto, a fresh and intense wine, with good acidity and delicate aromas of cherries and red fruit, combined with mocha and cacao and a long balsamic finish.

We often use the term “carbonic wines” to refer to those made with carbonic maceration, a system typical above all in Rioja Alavesa in which the grapes are fermented whole, with the stems.

Not all carbonic wines or wines with carbon dioxide have been made with this technique. For example, sparking and semi-sparkling wines also have carbonation without using this technique. Plus, newly fermented wines can also have bubbles of carbonation, from the fermentation.

What does carbonation in a wine mean? It helps keep it fresh, boosts primary aromas and makes the sugars seem less sweet.

The ageing of wines is the time they are stored in barrels, tanks or bottles to continue developing. Wine evolves over time, changing throughout its lifespan.

There are different types of ageing processes:

– Ageing in oak barrels: Rioja wines are aged in 225-litre barrels, racked periodically, and then finished in the bottle. Rioja has the largest inventory of barrels in the world: over 1,300,000.

– Bottle ageing: the time the wine spends ageing in the bottle.

And if we’re talking about the definition of a Crianza or aged wine, it is important to remember that each Regulating Council in our country sets its own parameters. For the Rioja Regulating Council, a Crianza wine is one “in at least its third year that has spent at least one year in oak barrels. For white wines, the minimum barrel-ageing time is 6 months.”

If you’ve already read the first two parts of the wine dictionary and want some more interesting facts, don’t miss this post!

Did you know that not all red wines should be served at the same temperature? It depends on their ageing. One thing does apply for all of them, though: they shouldn’t be kept in the fridge.

– Young red wines: it’s best to drink a young red quite cool, at 13-14ºC. For example, our 875m tinto is perfect at about 14ºC. How can you get it to this temperature at home before serving? The fastest, most effective way (if you don’t have a wine fridge) is to put the bottle of young red wine into a water and ice bath for about five minutes.

– Crianza red wines: the best temperature for a Crianza wine is 15ºC, like our flagship wine El Coto Crianza. You can use the same method to cool it down if it has been stored in a warmer area. But be careful not to get it too cold.

– Reserva and Gran Reserva red wines: Did you know a Reserva or Gran Reserva served under 16ºC will be much harsher on the palate? Plus, you won’t be able to truly appreciate the bouquet and tertiary aromas. That’s why we recommend serving these wines, such as our Coto de Imaz Reserva or Coto Real Reserva, at no less than 16ºC and no more than 18ºC.

Young sparkling wines are best quite cold, served at 6-8ºC. “Vintage” sparkling wines, however, which have been aged longer, are best served at 8-10ºC.

Semisweet white wines, great with starters and appetisers, cheese, fruit and dessert, are best served at the same temperature as a normal white: 7-8ºC.

Had you heard or thought that rosé wine was just a blend of red wine and white wine? Not at all! In fact, that’s not allowed in the EU.

Rosé wine is made with the same grapes used for red wine, but it isn’t fermented with the skins. For the El Coto Rosado, we use Grenache and Tempranillo grapes. The Grenache grapes used to make this wine come from our estate in Ausejo, Los Almendros, and the Tempranillo grapes come from Rioja Alavesa. With these two grape varieties and the winemaking process, we get a tantalising wine with flavours of fresh strawberries and caramel.

– Saignée: This technique probably yields the highest quality wine. The grapes are left to macerate for a short, variable period of time until the must takes on the desired colour. Then the tank is bled, which is where the technique gets its name (saignée means bled in French), and it goes straight into another tank to continue the process just like a white wine. This bleeding process normally makes finer, more complex wines.

– Maceration: With this technique, the grapes are pressed as soon as they reach the winery, after being crushed. The different pressing fractions are separated to settle separately. This process gives the wines more structure.

– Blending: this technique gives us a different type of rosé wine known as “clarete”. It is a coupage of must from white and red grape varieties. For decades, this wine was the most common type in Spain. But that deserves an article of its own! As we were saying, don’t confuse this process with that of blending finished red and white wine, which is prohibited.

Our El Coto Rosado wine is made in part by bleeding the free-run must from the grapes in the winery and in part through pellicular maceration and then pressing.

In both cases, the must is clarified before being fermented. The musts are made and fermented in the presence of select yeasts and at very low temperatures to encourage all the aromas of fresh fruit in our wine to develop. It is kept at a low temperature in the winery until it is bottled.

Plus, did you know that the grapes are covered with a curtain of carbonic gas when they get to the winery to protect them from oxidation? The same gas is used to instantly refrigerate the grapes! Isn’t that odd?

As we said at the beginning, rosé wine is perfect with all sorts of dishes, such as salads, pasta, fish, some types of cheese and cuisines like Asian food. Here are some quick tips:

• With a salad, always choose a light dressing like olive oil or, if you want something more, yoghurt is a good option. Avoid lemon and vinegar so you won’t taste bitterness.
• Pair your rosé with white fish like hake, sea bass or cod. It’s also perfect to have with a sushi feast!
• If you want to have a rosé with your cheese board, go for things like Brie and Camembert, which are the best cheese pairings for this type of wine by far.

Want to know more about how to pair rosé and other types of wine? Don’t miss this article!

Don’t take Valentine’s Day at home as something boring and imposed by the circumstances. It’s a great plan! At home, with the person you love and a good wine. What could be better?

And to make this special day perfect, we have 3 ideas for celebrating Valentine’s Day at home, with a couple glasses to toast to the best that is yet to come. You can even use these ideas with anyone you love and share your day-to-day life with: your mum, a flatmate, a friend… Let’s drink to this 14 February!

Let’s start with our first idea! Cook a meal at home with a spectacular wine pairing. You can do this two ways:

1-As a surprise: if the other person leaves for a while (you could even send them out on an errand), take advantage and get cracking! However: remember to plan your menu first, have the wines and all the ingredients ready so you can prepare the meal in record time. When they come back, the surprise will be the best gift.

2-Couples time: another option is to make cooking the meal together part of the plan. That way, you can spend a great afternoon of food and wine while you prepare the best Valentine’s Day meal ever, with your favourite dishes.

In terms of the menu, there are loads of options to pair the dishes with some good wines (at least two different ones). But keep in mind the personal preferences of the person you’re sharing your table with and make something you know they’ll love, or make one of your favourite dishes together.

Once you’ve set the menu, it’s time to choose the right wines to go with it. In general:

– For finger foods, for example, including cheese: white wines like El Coto Blanco  are best with younger cheeses, and aged cheeses pair best with Crianza reds like El Coto Crianza.

– If you’re going for seafood, we recommend our barrel-fermented 875 m Chardonnay or El Coto Selección Viñedos Sauvignon Blanc.

– For red meat, a Reserva or Gran Reserva goes amazingly well, enhancing its flavour.

Want to know more? Which El Coto wine to pair with poultry, pasta, rice or dessert?  Don’t miss this article with all the tips you need!

Another romantic Valentine’s Day plan is to draw a bubble bath for that special someone so they can relax and unwind with some good wine. Of course, you can also share that moment if you want.

Remember to set the mood. These are stressful times and it’s important to make the moment perfect for both of you to completely disconnect and enjoy yourselves. So think candles, relaxing music and loads of bubbles! The most important part of this plan, though, is having a good wine close to hand (maybe on a stool or tray).

Which do you think would fit the moment best? We wouldn’t hesitate: a gentle, fresh wine. You could go for El Coto Rosado, our El Coto Semidulce or even the surprising 875 m red.

We haven’t been able to do any wine visits for a long time now, and in some places it hasn’t even been possible to try new wines at wine bars or restaurants. So we can’t think of much that would be better or more fun for a Valentine’s Day at home than setting up your own blind tasting.

Obviously this experience will be your “gift” to the other person because you will already know the wines, but we promise you can also learn loads when you start tasting.

For a blind tasting you need:

• At least 3 different bottles of wine to taste
• One glass per person for each wine you’re going to taste
• Something to cover the labels on the bottles so you don’t give anything away
• A mask so the colour of the wine doesn’t give you any clues
• Some snacks to go with the tasting
• Good luck!

If you want to know more about blind and open tastings, here are all the answers to your questions and some tips so everything will go off without a hitch!

This is a little extra that you could add to any of the plans, even for a family member or friend, this 14 February.

If the person is a wine-lover, you can always surprise them with a gift pack, like the ones we have on our website. And if you want to get a bouquet of flowers or other trinket to go with it, it’ll be perfect!

The wine world if full of interesting facts and stories. This makes sense as it is a beverage that is consumed around the world and was first made thousands of years ago. Can you imagine how many wine stories we could tell?

In this article, we have 10 interesting facts from the world of wine that we think you might like. If you have others, share them with us on any of our social media profiles.

Here we go!

The world’s largest winery is in Moldova and it is in the Guinness Book of World Records. It has a whopping , which were dug in previous centuries, but current250 kilometres of tunnelsly only 50 kilometres are in use. In them ‘sleep’ two million bottles of wine.

The word itself comes from the old tradition of putting toasted bread in wine before offering wishes of goodwill or complements. But where does the tradition of toasting come from?

There are many theories: one dates back to the Middle Ages, when poisonings were commonplace. So, at banquets, diners would knock their glasses together so hard that a bit of liquid from each glass would end up in all the others. That way they made sure none of the glasses were poisoned.

Another theory goes back to Roman banquets and feasts, when they tended to raise and hit their glasses to get the servers’ attention and keep the wine flowing. You can’t say it isn’t practical!

Did you know wine ages better in a bigger bottle? Magnum bottles (1.5l) extend the lifespan of the wine and preserve it better than standard bottles. This is because a smaller proportion of the wine is in contact with oxygen.

Have you ever wondered? It’s hard to give a 100% accurate answer to this one, but we estimate it takes approximately one kilogram of grapes to fill a 75cl bottle. On average, each bunch of grapes weighs 200 or 300 grams, so it would take four or five to fill a standard bottle. Did you think it was more or less?

Science says so! According to a study carried out in the United States by the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and published in the journal Nature, resveratrol, a natural antioxidant found in foods like red grapes, helps slow age-related memory loss.

Any of our wines are perfect for proving the theory right!

You’ve surely seen wineries and vineyards a stone’s throw from a monastery more than once. That’s because, in the Middle Ages, war was a threat to winemaking. So, the religious orders were in charge of growing and caring for the grapevines. Then they sold the wines, too. Did you know that?

Incredible but true. It’s called Commandaria, a sweet wine from Cyprus that was described by Greek poet Hesiod around 800 BCE. The interesting thing is that is it still produced in a very similar manner today, using two Cypriot grape varieties. So it’s a unique wine for many reasons.

It was around 1900 BCE, when the Phoenician colonists arrived on the peninsula. They set up a port in Gadir (Cadiz) and established the city of Xera (Jerez), where they started planting the first grapevines. That is when we find the first traces of large-scale grape growing in Spain.

And beyond Spain, you have to know that there is no continent where wine is not grown. Even the McMurdo Dry Valleys, on Antarctica, are home to one variety of wine grapes.

This area is nearly 5,000 km2 and ice free. That’s why it’s called the Dry Valleys! The climate in this zone is more like Mars than anywhere else on Earth, but a few years ago scientists managed to grow a wine there, which is quite a feat. Such are the curiosities of wine!

We’re going to bring this round of wine curiosities to a close with two concepts. They are opposites but both are very interesting! Oenophobia refers to a fear of wine. This uncontrollable, irrational phobia is normally tied to dipsophobia, which is the fear of alcohol in general.

On the other hand, we have oenophilia, which describes people who have a true love of and devotion to wine. We can identify a bit more with the latter!

Want to learn more about wine? Check out these articles!

We’re inaugurating our Wine Dictionary! From now on, every month we’ll bring you concepts and words from the wine world that you might not know or fully understand, plus other interesting facts.

Because there is a lot of specialised vocabulary that is unknown or complicated even for wine-lovers who drink it often. But that’s where we come in!

We’ll start off with 5 words that you’re surely more or less familiar with. We hope to clear things up and surprise you a bit, too!

Some call it the “harvest” and others “vintage”. It refers to the year the grapes were picked for a specific wine. And what does that mean? Well, depending on the weather conditions that year, the grapes will have grown and matured in a specific way.

But don’t be fooled, you need more than just a year classified as “a good vintage” to yield an exceptional wine. Of course, the conditions that year have an impact (a big one), but they aren’t everything.

How do you know the vintage of a wine? Normally, it will be on the label (although it isn’t compulsory). For example, our Coto de Imaz Reserva is a 2016 vintage. And we can assure you it is SPECTACULAR. Have you tried it yet?

Have you ever heard someone say a wine is “astringent”? Well, when we say a wine is astringent or has astringency, we are referring to the dry, rough feel it leaves in your mouth.

It is a difficult sensation to define that, obviously, is picked up when focusing on the mouthfeel in any tasting. It is caused by the tannins reacting with your saliva. Tannins (which we’ll look at later on in this series on the Wine Dictionary) are what give wine its characteristic crimson colour, as well as this dry, bitterness.

Moving on to another characteristic of some wines. Fruity or fruit-forward wines are those that evoke smells and tastes of fruit. And not just grapes, of course!

A fruit-forward wine can have a palate and nose reminiscent of currants, bananas, apricots, peaches, plums, raspberries, etc. Don’t confuse it with sweetness, though, as they are different flavours. Fruity doesn’t mean sweet.

Fruit-forward wines are normally young, although some wines that have been aged longer retain their fruitiness thanks to the special selection of grapes used. Plus, this characteristic of smell and taste can be found in red, white and rosé wines. 

In our case, we recommend you try our 875 M Chardonnay, which respects the fruity and floral notes of that grape variety, plus tropical notes of pineapple and a delicate aroma of vanilla. Sounds too good not to try…

When we refer to a wine’s aroma, we’re talking about the pleasant scent of the wine that stimulates the taste buds. Yes, pleasant. Why? Because, in the wine world, unpleasant odours (like a damp cork, for example) are not referred to as aromas. The aroma of a wine, even though we use it in the singular, is made up of 3 different types aromas:

– Primary aromas: come directly from the grape variety used to make the wine. You can smell them when you tilt the glass, increasing the surface area of wine in contact with the air.

– Secondary aromas: from the fermentation processes, such as alcoholic and malolactic fermentation. They come out as you swirl the wine in the glass.

– Tertiary aromas: also called the bouquet, they are from the ageing process, either in the barrel or the bottle.

We’ll go much deeper into the world of aromas, so keep a close eye on our blog!

This is probably one of the least well-known words in our first instalment of the Wine Dictionary. And that’s normal! It isn’t a word you hear often, but we’re going to try our best to define it.

When we talk about boxwood in a wine, normally it’s an aroma. A smell reminiscent of the boxwood plant: bitter and penetrating. It’s normally found in wines that have Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which contain a molecule (p-mentha-8-thiol-3-one to be precise) that gives off a powerful aroma of boxwood, which is also sometimes called the aroma of “broom”. Isn’t that curious?

Of our wines, El Coto Selección Viñedos Blanco has boxwood aromas typical of this variety grown in colder regions, plus tropical and citrus notes. It’s spectacular!

We hope you’ve learned something new!

Before you go, don’t miss these other blog posts we’re sure you’ll love!

The most important thing here is time. What does that mean? The faster you get to it, the greater your chances to getting the stain out completely. Try not to let it dry! If it has, though, don’t worry! We’ll also look at options to get rid of a dried red wine stain.

Milk can be a great option and something everyone has on hand at home. It has to be animal milk though; plant-based milks won’t have the same effect because they have less fat and other ingredients. Milk is great at getting rid of red wine stains, or ink stains, among other things.

How do you apply it?

First, get a clean cloth. Dip it in the milk and dab it onto the stain. Try not to rub it. You could just end up spreading the stain. Then, as soon as possible, put the stained item in the washing machine and wash it as you normally would. No need for hot water.

Perfect trick for…

Clothing that isn’t too delicate and can be machine washed.

Bicarb isn’t as common as milk, but if you have some around the house it’s another good option for getting rid of a red wine stain.

The sodium in bicarb attracts and traps wine particles when they are still wet. So, as we said before, it’s best to apply it as quickly as possible.

How do you apply it?

Put a glass of water and half a glass of bicarb into a container. Stir well and pour it onto the stain. Let it sit until it dries on the stain. Then brush it off, or hoover it up off a carpet, and wash with soap and water.

Put a glass of water and half a glass of bicarb into a container. Stir well and pour it onto the stain. Let it sit until it dries on the stain. Then brush it off, or hoover it up off a carpet, and wash with soap and water.

Perfect trick for…

Any item: sofa, carpet, tablecloth or even less delicate garments.

Salt is one of the tricks most people already know, since it is highly absorbent. On its own, it probably won’t solve your wine stain issue 100%. But it could help considerably reduce it and keep it from spreading in the beginning.

How do you apply it?

Get rid of as much wine as you can with kitchen roll (no rubbing!) and pour the salt right onto the stain. Then leave it for 3-5 minutes. Don’t leave it any longer because you could end up with the opposite effect, helping set the stain! Then brush it off and you’ll see most, if not all, of the stain has disappeared. Finish washing with soap and water.

Perfect trick for…

Tablecloths and carpets.

This is a quick, effective solution that most of us have at home to easily get rid of wine stains.

How do you apply it?

In a container, mix equal parts hydrogen peroxide and liquid detergent. Put the mixture onto the stain and rub gently. Then let it sit. Afterwards, wash normally.

Perfect trick for…

All sorts of clothing, but only light colours. The hydrogen peroxide can bleach darks.

-White wine

Did you know white wine can help you get out a red wine stain? Get a cloth, dip it in white wine and dab at the red wine stain. Leave it for a few minutes and then wash with soap and water.

– Boiling water

This is perfect if the red wine ended up on the tablecloth. Stretch it out as much as possible, with the stain visible. Then pour on boiling water. Watch the stain disappear!

– Stain removers

You can also use special stain removers, but you have to be careful when you apply them. Read the instructions carefully, and the tags on the clothing, sofa, carpet or other fabric, too.

If you didn’t make it in time to get out the damp red wine stain and now it’s completely dried, don’t worry! You still have options, but it might not look as good. Or it may take a bit more effort to get rid of it completely. Some of the tricks above also work on dried red wine stains, like bicarb and liquid detergent with hydrogen peroxide.

If you’ve already washed the piece of clothing and the stain didn’t come out, an easy household solution is to put the fabric in milk that has just started boiling. Move the fabric around once in a while but don’t scrub the stain until you see it starting to disappear. Then rub it gently, even with your hands.

You can always use traditional stain removers, which may work. As we said, remember to read the labels on the fabrics and products.

We hope these tips have been helpful!

Want more wine content? Don’t miss these two articles on our blog!