Sunday, November 30, 2008

Wine Tasting: Acquiring the Delicate Talent of Wine Tasting

By KC Kudra

Wines tasting party is the perfect place to try out your wine tasting skills as well as learn from veteran wine connoisseurs. Wine tasting, contrary to what is usually thought, and is not a lot of people standing around looking chic while sipping, swishing and eying glasses of Napa Valley wines. It is actually an art form that requires a sharp sense of smell, taste, and an eye for the sublime. Mastering the techniques of professional wine tasting can take a great deal of practice and there is always some new technique to learn.

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 not necessarily the main factor, but they do identify food, beverages and as being sweet, salty or bitter. The swishing method, therefore, gives the senses a chance to extract the aromatic flavors in the wine testing process.

Understanding the fundamentals of swishing allows the connoisseur to move on to the three basic principles of the art of judging a fine wine - observing, smelling, and finally tasting.

When the wine is poured, it should be ideally poured into a crystal, clear glass so that the first step - observation - can take place. With the sample in hand, this step should not be rushed and instead, it should be slow, deliberate and the moment, appreciated. White wines, in spite of their name, are actually not completely white ranging in color from golden, pale brown to a slightly tinged shade of green. Red wine, on the other hand, is usually darker with a pink hue that leans toward 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.

You will often see the most studied of experts pause at this stage to take in the results of this step and reflect on what they have just experienced.

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.

Having completed the steps of observing, smelling, and finally tasting the wine, you will then be able to discern the quality of the wine from a connoisseur's standpoint. This is the most comprehensive way to determine the aging, storage, and overall fitness of the wine for consumption. In addition, as with any skill, the more practiced you become, the more adept you will be at evaluating the unique and exciting flavors of this special beverage.

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