Forget it in the freezer: I know that many a sommelier will cringe to hear this, but it’s the truth, and come on, we all do this in a pinch. Stick a bubbly or white wine in the freezer for 15-30 minutes to get it ice cold. It works like a charm, but only if you don’t forget it. Case in point—hosting clients last month we served espumoso right off the bat and had my assistant put another bottle in the freezer. The night got busy, we were tired at the end, and the next morning, I opened the freezer in search of ice cubes for my smoothie and found a frozen wine mess. I was ticked at myself for sacrificing a great bottle of Cruzat for no good reason and had to defrost the whole freezer to clean. Duh!!

Heat it up: I had never seen this costumbre, habit, until living in Chile. One chilly winter night, my husband’s uncle went to fetch a nice Cab. He pronounced the wine too cold and he wanted to “warm it up” by the roaring fire place. That was like a scratching a record with a needle to my ears. Fingernails on a chalk board. Don’t do that, you’ll ruin the wine and it will taste like wine-flavored scotch. Repeat after me. Thou shalt not heat up red wine with any form of heat.

Omit drinking water after several bottles: We’ve all been there, no? The night gets fun, the buzz is long, and the wine keeps flowing. At some point, you get bleary eyed and can only dream of your pillow. Hit the sack though without some precious, life-quenching H20 and you’ll pay hell the next day. Did we really need to kill 3 bottles among 4 people? Maybe or maybe not, but try to balance out your wine with a big glass of water per glass of wine. Your head will thank you.

Label it after a tasting: This latest mishap happened last night while shooting a new wine video for this blog (coming soon!). After filming some b-roll of pouring and swirling, we had a mélange of glasses whose order I remembered—on the table. I moved them to the kitchen and arranged them next to the corresponding bottles, or so I thought. I started to funnel the undrunken wine back into the bottle. At one point, I realized the Cab was low and then, s-h-i-t, I had done the unthinkable and funneled my Chilean Cab into the Uruguayan Tannat. One whiff and my suspicion was confirmed. In all fairness, the result was passable, although it was far from my intention to start my own international wine blending experiment. Do yourself a favor and use a sticky note to avoid confusion.

Label your wine that’s destined for vinegar: This sounds really obvious but on a couple occasions now, my mother-in-law who was house and cat-sitting for us, had consumed some leftover wine I had designated for homemade vinegar (couple weeks into the process actually). In fact, I was so stumped the last time as to where the heck the vinegar bottle had gone I called her. She confessed to drinking it and that explained why it was so nice and añejado, oxidized (which some people like here in South America).

Drive with a decanter on your front seat: This sounds really obvious but by far, this was the funniest wine mishap I encountered. In Houston back in October, I was invited to a blind tasting among some wine buff clients called “Bad Judgment Night” (everybody pulls a bottle from their cellar that pains them to open). Everybody arrived early at the host’s home to decant their wines and assign a sticky note letter on the decanter for the blind tasting later. One of the participants rings the host’s doorbell and is covered in red wine. He’s flustered and announces, “We’ve had a bad judgment accident”. Apparently he had decanted the wine at home to avoid any evidence of the wine’s origin, strapped the decanter in the front seat and headed out to drop if off at the host’s home. En route, he got cut off in traffic, slammed on the brakes, and the better part of his wine (which we later discovered was a 2002 Chateau Margaux, gasp!) ended up on the console, floor of car, and part of his white shirt. How would you explain that one to your spouse? Oh honey, I stained the car with wine. At least it was “baptized” with a premier grand cru.

So what wine mishaps have you guys had? Feel free to share in the comments some of your tips of what NOT to do with wine. Have a good weekend and see you next week.