i love wine
Posts 1-1 of 1
-
水水（shuishui Wang） 王 Premium Member Group moderatorThe company name is only visible to registered members.Making the Most of Your Tasting Experience
Making the Most of Your Tasting Experience
Discovering how to taste wine, versus just drinking wine, enhances the experience for both connoisseurs and novices alike. Concentrating on the pleasure of tasting wine leads to a deeper appreciation and the more you know about wine, the more you will enjoy it.
Five Tips to Tasting!
Tuning up the nose. Be healthy, unfortunately allergies, having a cold or any other aliment that interferes with your sense of smell makes tasting wine a waste of time. If you can’t smell it you can’t taste it! Consider your surroundings, overwhelming odors, from candles and smoke make it difficult to smell wine. When setting out to taste wine refrain from using perfume or aftershave, avoid cigarettes, strong spices, and breath mints.
Grabbing the glass. Yes, there is a perfect glass for each type of wine, but that is another story. Basically, the standard tulip-shape wineglass will work, it should be clear, clean, and thin. Hold the glass from the stem to avoid warming the wine with your hand. Fill the glass no more than a third of the way up so the wine can be swirled without spilling. Swirling does take practice, practice at home with water, I’ve had several tops ruined by miss-swirled wine (usually my own).
Checking it out. Look at the wine against a white background by tilting the glass away from you. The first indication of quality is in the intensity and shade of color. Please don’t observe the way the wine runs down the sides of the glass, "legs" or "tears" do nothing to indicate quality and it is a myth.
If you see green shades in a white wine, expect acidity, a crisp quality that causes the mouth to water. Yellow-gold indicates ripeness or barrel-aging, a quality which imparts an oaky or smoky smell or taste. If you see a hint of brown, this could indicate the wine is past its prime or oxidized. White wines darken with age. Some white wine color terms: yellow, pale, straw, lemon, green, and golden.
Purple and blue in a red wine indicate youth and richness. Orange or brick tones at the rim speak on the red's maturity as red wines fade in color with age. Some red wine color terms: light, opaque, garnet , ruby, plum, inky, and purple.
Smelling the wine. Swirl the wine in your glass, swirling takes practice, the more surface area you cover the easier it will be to smell the wine. Give the glass a few swirls and bring it quickly to your nose, breath in and concentrate on the odors. Swirl and smell the wine again and begin to associate what you smell with familiar aromas, such as: fruits (blackcurrant, raspberry, plum, apple, banana, citrus…), herbs and spices (clove, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, mint…), flowers (iris, violet, rose…), foods (chocolate, coffee, fresh bread, tea, mushrooms…), earth and woods (hay, leaves, leather, tar, oak…), and unpleasant odors (wet fur, dirty socks, mold). Smelling wine is all about practice and concentration. You can train yourself to smell the subtle nuances in wine.
Tasting the wine. Take a medium-sized sip and slosh it around your mouth. Make sure your tongue is covered. With wine still in your mouth, purse your lips and breath air in over the wine to deepen the flavors, most of what you taste is what you smell.
When tasting several wines, here are a few tips.
Freshen your palate by eating a small slice of bread, plain cracker, or sipping water.
Learn to spit, you can only drink so much wine before your ability to concentrate becomes impaired.
Don't be embarrassed to pour wine out of your glass into the spit bucket; you will not be insulting the person behind the counter.
Rinse your glass with just a little of the next wine and then pour out, use water as a last resort.
Last, but not least, have fun! Wine tasting should be an entertaining and educational outing with a specific goal: find new wines, try them, and buy them.
- 06 Dec 2006, 07:40 am
