Wine Tasting Made Easy: The Secret to the Art of Wine Tastin

[Steve Peterson]

Wine Tasting Made Easy: The Secret to the Art of Wine Tasting


Hello everyone:

Wine tasting is a subject I truly enjoy talking about.

Many people love to drink wine and they also know whether a particular
type of wine tastes good to them. However, when it comes to actually tasting
wine, most wine drinkers don't have a clue what they're doing. They see
other people studying the wine, swirling the wine, smelling the wine,
and tasting the wine, and they have no idea what is happening.

If you're one of these people - you love the taste of wine but you
don'tknow anything about wine tasting - don't let yourself be intimidated by
the official way of tasting wine. It's not as complicated or complex as it
looks.

While there are many little subtleties you'll have to learn to actually
become an expert at wine tasting, it's very easy to at least look like
you know what you're doing.

When you first get the wine poured into the glass, you need to look at
the wine. Try to hold the wine up against a white background such as a
tablecloth. What you're looking for is the age of the wine. You can
tell the age by slightly tilting the glass and looking at the rim of the wine.
More mature red wines will have an orange or maybe more of a brown color to
them. The rim of younger red wines will usually appear purple in color.

The next step in wine tasting requires you to swirl the wine. Swirling
the wine allows the wine to blend together. After you swirl it, study it
again. What you're looking for this time is how many lines cling to the glass.
These lines are called legs. It's commonly believed that more legs
equals better quality.

Next, you want to smell the wine. So, swirl it again and this time
take-in a big whiff. Try to find different aromas in the wine. This is tough to
do at first but at least try to remember what the wine smells like overall.
Is it strong? Does it have underlying aromas? These are a couple questions to
consider.

Finally, you're ready to actually taste the wine.

When you taste the wine, you want to concentrate on three phases: the
first impression, the actual taste, and then the after taste. So, be sure to
note how the wine affects your taste buds when you first drink it in. Then
keep the wine in your mouth and let it roll over your tongue so that you can
concentrate on all the flavors. Then you can swallow the wine and pay
attention to any taste(s) that might be left on your taste buds.

Again, when you first start doing this, most likely you won't get a lot
out of it. In fact, you may not even see the point of doing it. It's tough
to distinguish between different scents and tastes and the entire process
can be confusing. However, as you learn more about wine tasting and as you
do it more often, you'll begin to find value in it and slowly you'll become
an expert. Then you'll know whether you truly like a wine.