It’s a light breezy Sunday, the rains are coming in, you can feel the clouds approach but they aren’t here yet. You look around and all you can see is serenity as you sit in the quaint little Italian bistro in the heart of the city. You know what to order for food but you want this Sunday to be a cut above the rest. A Sunday all other weekends would want to live up to. What better way to set the bar than to spend this lazy afternoon appreciating good wine?
“Wine is bottled poetry.”- Robert Louis Stevenson
Wine, just like an individual, needs to be known properly in order to understand and appreciate its diverse characteristics and traits. To start off your conversation with it, you first need to heighten your sense of smell and taste. This is achieved by reducing the distractions caused by all other senses. For an optimum wine tasting session we recommend a room with a soft colour, medium light and a calming atmosphere. Think of wine tasting as a meditation session where your thought process should not deviate from your task at hand- appreciating the wine.
In order to completely use your taste buds for the wine tasting wash and rinse your mouth with mineral or tap water, followed by eating a piece of a digestive biscuit. Isabelle Lesschaeve, a wine coach suggests, “Another good sensory practice is to take at least a one-minute break between samples is also beneficial to your senses.”
You can now start with your wine tasting session.
You must first realize that tasting wine and appreciating it also involves judging the make. Ensure that you do not get personal- The price or subjective importance of the wine should not result in a biased session.
You can also have some fun by having a completely informal discussion on your favourite wines irrespective of their standing during the session. Couple the conversation with some scrumptious food you think would do well for the pairing. Rinse and repeat every week. After all, beauty lies in the eyes of the wine holder!
Now that you’ve set up the environment for your wine tasting extravaganza, stay tuned for the techniques you should practice in order to get the most from your wine.
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