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Wine Tastings ? The Mystery Revealed

Have you ever wondered at the mysterious ritual that accompanies wine tastings. This article looks behind the ritual to reveal the simple truth of just what a wine tasting involves.

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Have you have ever wondered why people at wine tastings go through a form of ritual of tilting their glass, swirling the wine around the bowl, sniffing the wine and apparently gargling with the wine before eventually spitting it out? If you have, then this whole process is not really such a mystery and quite simply represents the five steps that are necessary to assess quality of a wine.

Let's look at each of these five steps to see just how simple the process really is.

Testing the color and clarity of a wine. In the case of red wines the glass should be tilted and then viewed against a white background. If you look at the edge, or lip, of the wine against the glass and see a dark color that runs clear to the edge then this indicates a very young wine. A slightly lighter color that tends to hold to the center of the glass with a wide clear lip is indicative of an older wine.

For white wines the clarity is assessed by looking straight down into the wine. The greater the clarity, the more the wine will appear to sparkle, rather like diamonds.

Testing the body of a wine. Swirl the wine vigorously around the glass and then observe the wine on the bowl of the glass once the glass is held still. In some cases the wine will appear to adhere to the bowl of glass while in other cases there will be little if any sign of the wine on the bowl at all. The more a wine adheres to the sides of the glass, the greater its body.

Testing the aroma of a wine. Swirl the wine in your glass to release its vapours and then sniff deeply. Assessing the resultant smell is something of an art that takes time to perfect but, in general, a young red wine will smell heavily of berries and will sometimes also smell sightly of mint, spice, liquorice, or chocolate. As a red wine ages it will smell more of raisons or prunes and, finally, when it is past its best, it will take on the aroma of vinegar. White wines follow a similar pattern.

Testing a wine's sweetness, acidity and tannin. Take a small amount of wine into your mouth and start by rolling it around on your tongue. Then, hold the wine in the center of the tongue and gargle by slowly sucking in air to vaporize the wine and release its flavor.

A sweet wine will cause a tingling at the tip of the tongue, while an acid wine will produce a sensation of pins and needles on the sides of the tongue. A wine that is high in tannin will create a feeling of dryness throughout the mouth.

Young red wines tend to contain a lot of tannin which acts as a natural preservative and is the reason why most red wines can be stored for much longer than white wines.

Testing the concentration and aftertaste of a wine. The finest red wines have a deep fruit concentration which is experienced just before you swallow. For this reason you should always swallow a little of the wine at wine tastings. The best wines will display a lingering, pleasant finish.

As with many things in life wine tastings can appear to be something of a mysterious ritual art but, behind all the show, is a quite simple process that most of us can master along with the so-called connoisseurs.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more information about wine tastings, as well as details of wine accessories, please visit GreatWineTastings.com today.

Zinfandel Wine



Tannin is a chemical substance in red wine that can act as a natural preservative. Tannins come from the skin, seeds, and the stems of grapes and are dissolved into the wine as it is made. Tannins can even be found in wine barrels (if the barrels have been used before). Tannins add the �mouth drying� finish to red wine. Tannins from a bad vintage or unripe grape can seem bitter or almost grainy on your tongue. Ripe, mature tannins are silkier and smoother. Still coating your mouth, but in a pleasant, well-balanced way.
Buy a good bottle of red wine today!

Wine Types



There are no rules! Try everything and see what you like. Forget the old "red with meat, white with fish"-it's completely irrelevant. Instead, if you live in a climate like the Northeast, you might make a seasonal choice: red in winter, white in summer. But a good wine will carry any dish.
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Wine Ratings



Wedding Anniversary (others). Try to find out what the happy couple drank at their wedding, or when they got engaged. If you can�t do that, find out where they took their honeymoon, and give them wine from that part of the world.
Find all your wine making kits at Ye Olde Wines

Wine Vineyard



Don't store sparkling wine in the refrigerator for more than 3 weeks unless it has a plastic cork. (The cork will dry out and the seal will fail.)
Store your wine properly in wine cellars

Virginia Wine Country Events

Featured Virginia Event: Oakencroft Spring Fiesta. Closest winery to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia. Our first event of the year. Featuring tours, tastings of our premier wines, picnic by the lake, enjoy the spring time in Jefferson Country and the panaromic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Live Music, light fare.

Wine Education | Wine Enthusiast

We have been very thorough in providing as much information on Wine Ratings as possible in this article. Please use it to make our efforts fruitful.We have been very thorough in providing as much information on Wine Ratings as possible in this article. Please use it to make our efforts fruitful.

Make no wine before its time

My Approach to Winemaking

"Make no wine before its time."

C.J.J. Berry's classic First Steps in Winemaking presented 130 winemaking recipes in a unique fashion, listing the recipes under the calendar month in which the ingredients are usually plentiful and the corresponding wines are usually made in Great Britain. While that organization probably served the home gardener well in the 1950s and 60s in Great Britain, elsewhere, especially in these days of readily available produce from produce and supermarkets, such an organization makes less sense. It is difficult to utilize such a presentation without constant reference to the index. An alphabetical organization is far more utilitarian and will be used in my recipes section, with the primary ingredient listed first. I'll leave the timing of your winemaking to you.

While I love grape wines, I also love the varied tastes of "country wines," those wines made from fruits, vegetables, seeds, grain, leaves, flowers, bark, roots, and other non-grape ingredients. In particular, I like making these various wines. So, while you will find grape-wine recipes here, you will find that the bulk of this web site is devoted to non-grape wines.

I am also more than a little partial to making wines from wild, edible plants. Maybe it's the Boy Scout in me or maybe it's the idea of using what God has placed before us to be used, or maybe it's the activity of hunting for and gathering the ingredients in the few remaining wild parcels of land surrounding us, but I suspect it's a bit of all three. Thus, I am fond of using wild grapes for my grape wines and wild edibles for my non-grape wines. So you will find sections of this web site devoted specifically to the native grapes of North America and making wines from wild edible plants. In most cases, the recipes for a wild ingredient's wine is the same, or almost the same, as for the domesticated variety of the same ingredient if there is a cultivated variety. When this is the case, the ingredient's wine recipe(s) will be found in the main recipe section. But when there are special considerations for the wild variety, the recipe(s) will be listed under the section on making wines from wild edible plants. Wine recipes for wild grapes will be found, naturally enough, under the section on native grapes. The point is, if you don't find a recipe under the main recipe section, look under the edible plants section just to be sure. And, in a very few cases, you will find different recipes for the same ingredient under both sections. Again, look in both sections just to be sure.

Finally, I have to warn you that portions of this web site are, as they say, "under construction." That simply means there is more to say on the subject. No, you won't find any "under constraction" signs, but you might notice that the page or section is obviously unfinished. Where this occurs, I apologize in advance. The material I aim to present is simply vast, and I only have limited time to devote to web-building. So I ask you to bear with me, bookmark the site, and check back often. The truth is that I have hundreds of wine recipes to post and intend to do so, but it does take time. If you can't wait, send me an email request for a particular recipe and I'll write you back and post the reply under the requested recipes section (another good place to check, by the way).

My best to each of you, and may your wines always meet your expectations.

About the Author

We have been in the Wine and Beer ingredient industry for
several years. Please visit our websites

The Masters Touch and New
York Micro Brew

Red Wines



Wine was also forbidden in the Islamic civilization, but after Geber and other Muslim chemists pioneered the distillation of wine, it was used for other purposes, including cosmetic and medical uses. In fact the 10th century Persian philosopher and scientist Al Biruni described recipes where herbs, minerals and even gemstones are mixed with wine for medicinal purposes. Wine was so revered and its effect so feared that elaborate theories were developed about which gemstone-cups would best counteract its negative side effects.
Treat your family to a great food and wine party!

Grape Varieties



Don't skip tasting the wine in a restaurant. Stop your conversation for a moment and give the wine your full attention. The nasty secret is that 5 % of all the wine bottled can be bad. That's all you're tasting for. Does the wine smell like a cheap hotel room shower or not?
Find some great french wines today!

Wine Reviews



Wines may be classified by their primary impression on the drinker's palate. They are made up of chemical compounds which are similar or identical to those in fruits, vegetables, and spices. The sweetness of wine is determined by the amount of residual sugar in the wine after fermentation, relative to the acidity present in the wine. Dry wine, for example, has only a small amount of residual sugar.
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Wine Ratings



Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest wine production came from sites in Georgia and Iran, dating from 6000 to 5000 BC.
Wine boy at a symposium.
Wine boy at a symposium.
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Wine Dictionary