Sight
Pour yourself a glass of wine and what’s the first thing you would do? Before any of our olfactory is put to work, our eyes are already sizing up for what’s to come. Just the sight of a white or red wine in your glass will already start to kick up our taste buds.
Taking a good look at what you are drinking can provide you with vital information such as age, style and even grape variety. Tilt your glass against plain white background and observe the colour. White wines then to be lighter in colour when young and takes on a more golden and slightly brownish tinge with age. Whites aged in oak barrels also tend to be more golden than those aged in stainless steel tanks, which are more straw or light yellow. Red wines are the opposite, retaining deep ruby red to inky purple hues (depending on the grape variety) when youthful and fading into a lighter, brick like red as time passes.
Swirl
Swirling your wine glass whilst chatting can be seen as a nervous habit or trying to keep the flies out of the glass, however make no mistake, this is a crucial part of your tasting experience. Just like perfume, wine reacts to oxygen (known as aeration), the more the aeration a wine gets, the more aroma is released hence more consumable pleasure. As the aromas are released into the stemware, this is when you dive in nose first to reap all that nostril glory. This is the reason why restaurants (at least those that knows how to serve wine) serve an oversized glass with the wine half full. It’s simply to give you more room for you to aerate your wine instead of ending up wearing the wine!
Smell
You have just stuck your nose into the glass and been assaulted with a battery of aromas. As your brain registers, you will start to categorize what’s good and what’s not, what’s recognizable and what’s not.
Each grape variety has its’ own unique characteristic which can be identified on the nose. For example, the smell of lychee fruit is unique to gewürztraminer, cassis is to cabernet sauvignon and so on. Once you familiarize your memory bank with this aromas and relations, you have embark on your journey on being a true wine connoisseur. Age of the wine can also be noted as the primary fruit aromas are replaced by what’s known as secondary characters. Usually the wines sweet fruit aromas change into something more earthy and delicate.
Taste
After all that visualizing and swirling, you must be parched! Take a nice gulp and give it a good swirl around in your mouth allowing all the fluid goodness to awaken your flavor sensors. Note all that is happening, this is pinnacle of your earlier efforts. There are four main tastes that everyone has, sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Note these coming alive while you swirl the wine around your mouth and allow some air to enter through your teeth. I know it’s not the sexiest of sounds but it does make the wine more appealing.
Now it is just a matter of savoring and enjoying your wine.
