Wine Tasting -- The Traditional way
We would like to take this moment to thank Jerry Powell for contributing this article: Wine Tasting -- The Traditional way. Anyone that contributes is a welcome addition to EverythingOnWine.com!Wine tasting is properly known as 'Wine Degustation'. It is the art of being able to note the various differences between difference types of wine, and even the various differences between the vintages of the same type of wine. There are basically two parts to Wine Tasting, first is 'What are we looking for' the second is 'How are we looking'. We'll start with the How, and move on to the What. Traditionally the seven steps to sampling wine are: see, sniff, swirl, smell sip, swish, and spit.
This is the process we see tasters going through at the table and in wineries. The first thing we want to do is see that the color of the wine is good. Put some light behind the glass and look for clarity. Fogginess is a sign we probably want to be careful with. Rusty colors in a white wine are another sign that we probably don't want to put it in our mouths.
That might seem a bit crass but let's keep in mind what we are looking at here. The act of Wine Degustation didn't get its start at high society dinner tables as a way to see what was good with lamb, and what is better with beef. Wine Degustation came into being as a method of deciding what was safe to drink and what might be poisonous due to bad storage or aging processes. While today these tasting methods are less defensive, since modern methods of wine making produce safer wines, some wines you may get to embrace were bottled 100 years ago, or even 200. Some red wines are so dark you will be lucky to see anything through them, but we still want to take a look.
Some of the more obvious signs we want to look for are brown, muddy, orange or other non-winelike colors. It is not uncommon to see bits of cork floating in a glass of wine, just try to make sure that it is cork.After our eyes are satisfied, we try our nose. Recall that taste is more or less an olfactory sense. With practice we can tell a great deal about a wine from its perfume. A good whiff at the very least will give you an impression, or preview of what to expect from the wine when we taste it.
The obvious impressions to look out for are: does it smell like wine? Is the overall fragrance fresh or foul? Anything strange about it? Our next step, the swirl, enhances our ability to evaluate the first two steps once more. The swirl is to get some of the wine onto the surface of the inside of the glass. Wines are generally not oily or syrupy. The liquid should slide off the side in an expected manner. Also with the wine spread out on the surface, it should be easier to get a better sample of the fragrance it presents.
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Jerry Powell is the owner of a popular site known as Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name, we are here to help you learn more about different kinds of Gourmet food and Wines, Coffees from all around the world.
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