How to taste wine properly?

Video:How to Taste Wine Properly

Tasting wine is a classic a skill every person should have in their arsenal. In this how-to video from About.com, learn the key elements of tasting and analyzing wine to enhance your palate.

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Transcript:How to Taste Wine Properly

Hi, I'm Sharon Sevrens the proprietor of Amanti Vino in Montclair, NJ. I'm here with About.com and I'm going to teach you the step-by-step guide on how to taste wine.

Analyze the Color

The first thing you want to do when tasting a wine is actually look at the color. The reason is the color can tell you a lot about what's in the glass. For starters, if the color is purple or ruby red, you can tell that this is a youthful wine. Where as if the color is more in the garnet or tawny range, then you can guess that the wine has some age to it.

The second thing you can look at is the core, or the center of the wine, versus the rim or the edge. If the color is consistent from the core all the way out to the edge, you can guess that the wine has some age to it. Where as if the rim has more of a watery color, than you can guess that the wine is more youthful. After, you've looked at the color, and you want it to be clean and bright looking, you want to swirl the wine around. It's really important to let it aerate and open up in the glass.

Smell the Wine

After you've swirled it around, the next thing you want to do is smell the wine. The reason is you can smell a lot more than you can actually taste. You want to go ahead and get your nose into the glass. I usually will smell the wine twice before I go ahead and taste it. In this case I smell lots of wonderful, black cherries and black berry flavors with a little bit of oak as well. You can't smell sweetness. You are using your nose to tease out different aromas.

Taste the Wine

When you taste the wine, you want to suck a little bit of air into your mouth and swirl the wine around so you can make sure it covers all of the areas of your mouth. On the tip of your tongue is where you taste dry versus sweet and the fruit flavors. On the sides of your tongue is where you can taste the acidity. Down the center of your tongue and on your gums is where you taste tannins. If your mouth starts watering then you know the wine has lots of acidity. If after you've swallowed the wine, your mouth feels a little bit dried out, that's probably a sign that the wine has a lot of tannin. The most important thing with wine tasting is that the wine is balanced. The wine can have a lot of tannins but it needs a lot of fruit and acidity to balance out those tannins.

Thank you for watching, for more information: go to Food.About.com.

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