Tasting : what to watch in a wine ?

Often, my normal friends - non-oenophile muggles — take a malicious pleasure in making fun of me when seeing me do a whole ceremony when I want to taste a wine. It's true I understand the ridiculousness of the strange behavior I can have. But remember that like many people, I thought my precious beverage just tasted like wine. Some seemed better to me than others, but I didn't know how to explain it. It changed when I really started tasting by following the few rules of tasting - and with training —.

I've heard people say they know how to taste wine and that the whole ceremony of the tasting is just a way to show off. This review is not totally wrong. You can learn Mandarin without following a learning method, but it may be more complicated. To taste, you just need a nose, taste buds and a brain.

In my opinion, wine is synonymous with pleasure and emotions. Swallowing your wine like you drink coke, you are satisfied with the pleasure of drinking it and you miss the discovery of emotions. By taking the time to taste, you will discover all the intensity of the emotions it offers you.

At the end of this series of articles, you will know the basics of tasting and you will have the resources to try it out !

This is the big moment, you opened your bottle and gently poured the precious liquid into your glass. You will be able to admire the beauty of the wine in your glass, observe the vividness of its colors and the way it reflects light, decide how to describe the shade of color you are going to give it. — looking at wine is a secret technique used by professionals to recognize a red wine from a white wine —.

To be able to contemplate your glass, it is necessary to think of a few simple rules to do it in the best conditions:

1. The glass is half full
2. We hold the glass by the foot — like the Beaux-Vins logo —
3. The glass is tilted over a white surface

Many bloggers will tell you that the first step in observation is to judge the clarity of the wine to identify the presence of defects. If you notice suspended matter in your glass, you can tell that the wine is dull or cloudy, otherwise you can say that it is crystal clear.

Many years ago, this advice was perfectly valid. Today, technology makes you more likely to win the lotto than to find visual flaws. As I explained in a previous article " Why is there a deposit in wine ? ", noticing the presence of a deposit at the bottom of your bottle is not a reason to throw it in the sink.

For any wine, the shade of color is determined by the region of production, the grape variety, the degree of ripening of the grapes, the winemaking method and age. To formulate this sentence differently, a wine from a region with cool climates will have a light color while wines from warmer regions will have a darker color. Here we will focus on the evolution of color over time : aging.