The Right Way to Wine Tasting

The basics of wine sampling are really rather easy. You don’t need to have formal training and anyone can do it. Etiquette dictates that the gentlemen should ensure the ladies are always served their wine first. In most wine sampling parties, you can expect to be served with a room temperature bottled water. The water is to wash out your mouth between tastes in order for the roof of the mouth to be clean for the next wine. Make sure that the water you are given is not too cold as this can shock the roof of the mouth and ruin the taste of your next drink.

When tasting wine, it is important that you hold the wine glass by the base and not cup the bowl in your handle. The aim of this is that it prevents you from heating the wine with your hands, you have to remember that this will also impact the overall flavour of the wine.

Sampling the wine doesn’t just involve putting the wine in your mouth and roll it about your tongue a couple of times before spitting or swallowing.

Looking at the coloring is the first thing you should do when wine sampling. The glasses served up should always be clean and clear in order for you take a good look at the wine. Use a white backdrop when checking the colour of the wine, this will enable you to see the true colour and clarity of the wine. White doesn’t always mean white when it come to wine, you can sometimes find white wine with a brown, yellow or even green shade. Again red isn’t always a pure red, you can have many different shaded but older red wine tend to be a little lighter.

Try doing a rim examination and look at the color of the wine, this can give you some indication as to the age or flavor. Just tilt the glass and look at the wine, if it is purplish in color, it points that the wine is young, if it is brownish, it means that it is an older wine.

The next step is to smell the wine, first swirl the wine around the glass to expose the wine to the air, position the glass close to your nostril and inhale deeply. The wine could have been in the bottle for a little as six months to many years so by twirling the wine you will be releasing the flavors. mixing wine from the bottle with air is no different that mixing all the ingredients together when cooking.