As everything else that touches your senses, drinking wine is connected with pleasure. Wine appeals to your eyes, taste and smell. Whether is red, rose or white, all wines are made to please you, the wine lover. Here are a few ideas about how you can improve your wine tasting experience, step by step.
A professional wine taster or critic would do like this: pour a bit (three or four small sips or a quarter glass), look at the color, swirl the glass, smell the aroma, taste the wine and spit – because he is not supposed to get “happy” but to evaluate wines. The order of a tasting would be whites before red, dryer before sweeter, lighter wines before big and powerful ones, and young wines before older wines. But there is no order or rule you, the wine lover, have to respect. The only good wine is the one you like and the only rule is the one you want to make. However, the following suggestions are meant to help you get more pleasure from a glass.
The Glass: Back in Europe, at home, we use simple wine glasses for everyday drinking. Here in the States everybody makes a big fuss about the shape of the proper wine glass. Blah-blah. The only thing I would highly recommend is to use a clean glass recipient – and not a plastic one. The shape really does not matter or make you any smarter (I know, snobs would eat me for this). A clean glass would allow you to see the color. The visual aspect of a wine is important – because you can distinguish the age and the defects (if any).
The Color: The wine should be clear of any insertions. You don’t drink dirty water, dirty soda, and dirty wine means that it was not crafted carefully or it had some problems after bottling. You deserve a clear, clean wine – it is a form of respect for you as a customer. White wines are usually light yellow, even pale (if too pale, they have too much sulfite), going toward pleasant golden. An orange wine has too many additions and there was definitely something wrong with it, in order to get stabilized to that color. As they age, they get darker, brownish they oxidize. A red young wine looks purple when it is young, and it gets dark deep red, then brown, as they age. Again, oxidation takes place in the bottle, during years.
Next blog I will be pointing to a few things about aromas, and explain why you should smell the wine, before tasting it.
