How to Taste Wine. (Part 1)

Tasting wine enables you to appreciate it's qualities, to decide whether the wine is drinkable and to be able to identify aromas and tastes typical of certain wines so you can determine whether or not you like them, and identify what styles of wine that you do enjoy. Wine tasting is a complex subject, so the more you know, the greater your understanding and the more likely you will enjoy it. Good wine is one of the worlds foremost pleasures and understanding how best to enjoy this past time will increase your chances of enjoying this pleasurable experience.

What do you need? the wine or wines to be tasted, a clean glass, daylight or fluorescent light, a white background (a white piece of paper is OK), no strong smells, cooking, perfume or smoking.

Preparation of the wines - the wine has to be at the correct temperature (12c), white wine should be served chilled, but not at fridge temperature as this is to cold. If your white wine has been in the fridge you should remove it about 20 minutes before you serve it. Wine if it is over chilled some of the flavors and aromas start to become suppressed, so there is a good reason for this. Red wine should be served at room temperature, so what is room temperature, this means a cool room (17c - 18c). If you have a lot of wines to drink you may need a spitoon, as drinking the samples other hand may cause you to fall over, if on the other hand you only have a few wines to drink this is not so important.

We are now prepared to taste the wine, the next part will appear on Friday.

"It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature".
Steven Wright.