Course 87 – The Five S’s of Wine

Wine can be very complicated or very simple. Let’s keep it simple! Wine is almost always just fermented grape juice. While there are many, many kinds of wine, 95% of them are grape juice that has fermented using our good friend, yeast. Yeast is an incredible fungi, responsible for wine, beer and bread. We’ve been using yeast for thousands of years to make our lives better and more enjoyable. There are thousands of wines made today. Wine is table wine, sparkling wine or fortified wine. That’s it-just three types of wine. All wines fall into one of these three categories.

Wine tasting can be fun and yes, even educational! Wine makes food taste better, conversation livelier and brings pleasure to our souls. Let’s learn the easy and correct way to taste wine as we enhance and enrich our lives.

Tasting wine is different than tasting other beverages! Americans usually gulp down beverages to quench our thirst. Tasting wine is a slower, more deliberate process with a wee bit of concentration required. Let’s get started!

The five steps are:

1. See: When we look at a wine we are looking at the clarity, color and brightness. Almost like shopping for diamonds! The wine should be clear, not cloudy. The color needs to be attractive to our eyes. There are infinite shades of colors to behold. We prefer the wine to be as bright as possible. Wine changes color as it ages. Reds become lighter in color & whites become darker.
2. Swirl: Now we’re moving the wine around in the glass, swirling it as much as we can without spilling any of the juice. A glass with a large bowl is best for tasting. Keep your pour to about a quarter of the glass capacity. Swirling releases the approximately 10,000 odors we can detect! We want to aerate the wine, getting oxygen to release its aromas.
3. Sniff: Now is not the time to be shy. Get your nose into the glass. Really. Not above the rim of the glass, but into the bowl itself! Close your eyes and sniff two-three quick sniffs. What does it smell like? Is it pleasant? It can smell like grapefruit, butter, apples, raspberries, cinnamon, vanilla, the list goes on and on ….. What you smell is all that matters!
4. Sip: Finally, we get to actually taste this fascinating beverage. As you sip the wine, inhale a bit of air with your sip & slurp the wine. Yes, it sounds silly, but it really helps us taste the liquid. Take your time and “chew” the wine. How does it taste: light/heavy, crisp/silky, sweet/acidic? “Feel” the wine. Is it a pleasant taste? Does it “taste like more?” Most important-do you like it? That’s really all that matters! 5. Spit (yes, spit) or swallow: If you’re at a wine tasting, please spit the wine out. Yes, I know it seems silly to spit perfectly good wine but if you’re tasting many different wines, you need to spit. We do this to be fair to the wines we taste later in the evening. You can always return to the wines you like and have a bit more. If you’re tasting only a few wines, do what comes naturally.

That is all there is to tasting wine like a professional. Wasn’t that easy? Now comes the hard partpractice, practice, practice. © 2011 The Wine Counselor LLC