Infusing with wine can be a pleasure and an enhancement to good food, drink and a fine meal! When wine is heated, the alcoholic content as well as sulfites disappears, leaving only the essence imparting a subtle flavor.
The first and most important rule: Use only wines in your cooking or drinks that you would drink. Never use any wine that you WOULD NOT DRINK! If you do not like the taste of a wine, you will not like the dish and drink you choose to use it in.
Do not use the so-called "cooking wines!" These wine are typically salty and include other additives that my affect the taste of your chosen dish and menu. The process of cooking/reducing will bring out the worst in an inferior wine.
Wine has three main uses in the kitchen - as a marinade Ingredient, as a cooking liquid, and as a flavoring in a finished dish.
The function of wine in cooking is to intensify, enhance, and accent the flavor and aroma of food - not to mask the flavor of what you are cooking but rather to fortify it.
For best results, wine should not be added to a dish just before serving. The wine should simmer with the food, or sauce, to enhance the flavour. It should simmer with the food or in the sauce while it is being cooked; as the wine cooks, it reduces and becomes an extract which flavors.
Remember that wine does not belong in every dish. More than one wine based sauce in a single meal can be monotonous. Use wine is cooking only when it has something to contribute to the finished dish.
