Assertion Partly supported
Rivest: No wine in the world costs over $40 to produce
“There's no single bottle of wine in the world that costs more than about 30 or 40 dollars to produce.”
Opinion
Rivest: Anyone without restaurant service experience is not a true sommelier
“So somebody who calls themselves a sommelier and has never worked in the restaurant business in their life is not really a sommelier. A sommelier is a server. It's a wine specialized server.”
Opinion
Rivest: Mass-market commercial wines are manufactured more like soft drinks
“A lot of wines out there actually resemble more Coca-Cola, you know, a soft drink, or processed cheese in terms of how they're made.”
Insight
Rivest: Avoid sommeliers who recommend wine without asking about personal preferences
“And if anybody gives you attitude, if anybody's arrogant, if anybody tries to recommend a wine, be it in a store or in a restaurant, without asking you a single question first, steer clear away from them, right?”
Insight
Rivest: No red wine is good served above 18 degrees Celsius
“There's not a red wine that's good above 17, 18 degrees, right? And the whole notion of room temperature I don't know, that goes back to the Middle Ages, but when houses are heated at 22, 23, there's not one wine that's good at that temperature.”
Insight
Rivest: Serving rosé ice cold mutes the wine and kills texture
“So many people drink their rosés ice cold, and that just mutes the wine, yeah? The better rosés, a lot of the better rosés are much better, like at 10, 12 degrees. A fridge is at four or five, eh? So, when they warm up, they really, rosés are not usually very …”
Insight
Rivest: Spitting wine delivers the exact same sensory evaluation as swallowing
“What's important to stress is that the learning process you will get everything exactly the same out of the wine except for the effect of the alcohol. Your appreciation of it, the evaluation of the body, of the structure, of the acidity, the tannins, everythin…”
Assertion Supported
Rivest: China is the world's sixth or seventh largest wine producer
“China is the sixth or seventh, ah, world's largest producer of wine today.”
Insight
Rivest: Complex wine flavors are perceived through smell, not taste
“When you say a wine taste of strawberries or chocolate or vanilla, it actually smells of those things, right? There's only four, five, or six basic tastes.”
Assertion Supported
Rivest: The elementary school tongue map of taste is completely false
“There's this other kind of slightly ridiculous notion out there that was vehiculated for years of a tongue map, whereas we taste this sweetness in the on the front of the tongue, acidity on the side, bitterness on the back. That was a mistake from the start. I…”
Insight
Rivest: Tiny profit margins can bankrupt high-revenue restaurant businesses
“You need a manager to open up a restaurant because the profit margins are so, so, so tiny. If you're not constantly You know, checking your numbers constantly, constantly, constantly. You can make loads of money and, well, revenues and close down because, you …”
Insight
Rivest: Use the '20-minute rule' for optimal wine serving temperatures
“Take your whites out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving them, and put your reds in the fridge 20 minutes before serving them.”
Assertion Supported
Rivest: Any wine sealed with natural cork can become corked
“Any wine can be corked. Port can be corked. Sparkling wine can be corked. But there's this, every time I have a corked sparkling wine, people, so often, oh, I didn't know sparkling wine could be corked. Yeah, of course, any wine can, any, anything that's close…”
Insight
Rivest: People underuse their sense of smell and lack olfactory memory
“We're so dependent on our eyes that we completely underuse our nose... You'll be surprised at how very common smells, everyday smells, people won't recognize once you're blindfolded, because we're not used to developing our smell memory.”
