Saturday, November 29, 2008

Wine Tasting 101: Learning the Art of Wine Tasting

By KC Kudra

Wine tasting and attending a wine tasting party, contrary to popular belief, does not involve a lot of sipping, swishing and swallowing. While there is a definite art to wine tasting and many different wine-tasting forms, the popular theory of sipping and the like could not be farther from reality. It does, however, take years of practice to master the technique.

Wine tasting notes can be utilized to distinguish a variety of fine wines and picking them is reliably depends on developing a trained palate which can only be attained over many years of practice. Wine that is properly housed and aged can be, to the connoisseur, an exquisite experience.

The foundation of wine tasting is actually rooted in our sense of smell. In fact, over 75% of our taste is actually due to our sense of smell and has a major impact on the taste of the food and drink we consume. Moreover, this is also why when we have a cold our sense of taste is so distorted. Most wine experts will agree that wine has more to do with smell than taste, but that is often where the agreement stops and personal preference takes center stage.

Napa Valley wine tasting is one of the places that was at the forefront of initiating proper wine tasting. Wine growers realized that with the all too familiar swishing came with a purpose. Its purpose is to circulate the taste of the wine by moving it from the front of the mouth to the rear in order to hit all of the taste buds on the tongue.

Taste buds are called into action; the olfactory senses are sent into overdrive and through a carefully implemented wine tasting design, wine connoisseurs not only identify the beverage, but can usually figure out the quality of the wine from the aromatic wafting of the beverage. This can be ascertained early on in the wine tasting process.

When you attain a basic understanding of the swishing technique and its purpose with a true wine connoisseur, there are three more elementary techniques that need to be taken into consideration when judging the quality of a fine wine - observation, smell, and taste.

Wine should ideally be served in a crystal clear glass so that the delicate color and hue are not distorted by the color of the glass. This allows the first step, observation, to be fully realized. With the sample, a wine connoisseur can take a leisurely approach to examining the wine. This is part of the process, taking a deliberately slow look to see if any imperfections in color and hue can be seen. For instance, White wines actually are not white. They range in color from a golden, pale brown to a shade of light green. Red wine is, by contrast, darker with a pink hue and can run the gamut between a dark pinkish color to a darker brown color.

The second step is closely observing the smell of the wine that is actually accomplished in a two-step fashion. First, you should take a brief whiff of the wine to get a general idea of what you are dealing with. Next, you will take an extended, deep drawn in smell in order take in the full aroma of the beverage.

Experts will generally pause at this point to take in and process what they have learned so far about the wine. They will want to reflect on the total experience with the wine.

After letting it come fully into their consciousness, a wine taster will then take a sip, swish it around to activate all of the taste buds to ascertain the wine and savor it fully prior to swallowing. This method allows all senses to be engaged in the process of taking in the wine, figuring the quality of it. This allows wine growers to figure out if their grapes, distillation process, and procedures used to store it in a wine cellar or storage unit was sufficient to produce a fine quality wine.

As it is with any skill, practice is part of the overall wine tasting methodology. While wine tasting is considered a skill that can be learned, wine experts will tell you that it is really more of an art. - 16492

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