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 How to Taste Wine
How do you properly taste and evaluate a glass of wine? TheWineCooler.net team has a few wine tasting tips for you.
Tasting Conditions
Like many things in life the environment your in can effect your impressions. A noisy or over-crowed room and make your concentration difficult. Smells of food or perfumes can alter your ability to get a clear sense of a wine's aromas. A wine glass that is too small, the wrong shape, or has a smell of dishwasher detergent can also affect the wine's overall flavor. It is important to neutralize the tasting conditions as much as possible, so the wine has a fair chance to stand out on it's own.
Evaluating by Sight
Once you're comfortable in your tasting conditions, the next step is to examine the wine. With the glass one-third full follow these steps to visually evaluate the wine.
- Straight Angle View: Look straight down into the glass, then hold the glass to the light, and give it a tilt, so the wine rolls toward its edges. This will allow you to see the wine's complete color range, not just the dark center.
- Side View: Viewing the wine through the side of the glass held in light shows you how clear it is.
- Tilted View: Tilting the glass so the wine thins out toward the rim will provide clues to the wine's age and weight.
- Swirl: Give the glass a good swirl. You can swirl it most easily by keeping it firmly on a flat surface; open air "freestyle" swirling is not recommended for beginners. Notice if the wine forms "legs" or "tears" that run down the sides of the glass. Wines that have good legs are wines with more alcohol and glycerin content, which generally indicates that they are bigger, riper, more mouth-filling and dense than those that do not.
Evaluating by Sniff
Swirl your glass, but try not to bury your nose inside it. Instead, you want to hover over the top. Take a series of quick, short sniffs, then step away and let the information filter through to your brain.
Evaluating by Taste:
The fun part! Take a sip, not a large swallow, of wine into your mouth and try sucking on it as if pulling it through a straw. This technique simply aerates the wine and circulates it throughout your mouth. You should encounter a wide range of fruit, flower, herb, mineral, barrel and other flavors. Aside from simply identifying flavors, you are also using your taste buds to determine if the wine is balanced, complex, evolved, and complete.
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