A Wine Tasting at Home with Friends

For most people, they only get to go to wine tastings at certain special food and wine events or in vineyard tours. While these are perfect places to hold wine tastings, one wonders if bringing wine tastings closer to people especially if you have friends whom you want to introduce to the different nuances of wine or to new wines that you have encountered. But what to do if you can’t drag your friends over to vineyards or bring them to events? Why, hold a wine tasting in your home, of course.  

Wine tasting works wonderfully well when you are introducing wine appreciation to people who want to start drinking wine or want to know more about it. It doesn’t even have to be particularly expensive since there are a lot of great-quality inexpensive wines. You can buy a sampling of these wines to introduce some close friends to the art of wine drinking and appreciation. You may want to choose the best wines from that low price point – and there are surprisingly great wines at unbelievable prices.

If you are already a wine drinker, you will already have the proper wine glasses to go with whatever wine you want to have a wine tasting for. Assuming you will only have a small group of friends over, your glassware will be enough. You will need to educate your visitors about the importance of using the right glass and stemware.

With regards to the actual wine tasting, there are three stages. First is its appearance. Characteristics such as color and clarity will have to be observed for both red and white wine varieties. What’s the color of the wine?For white wines, is it colorless, yellow, amber, etc? Is your red wine burgundy, purple, dark red, or almost brown? Assess the clarity by observing whether it is clear, cloudy, opaque, brilliant, etc.

Next comes the aroma of the wine. Before you taste the wine, you have to smell it first. Stick your nose down into your glass and inhale. Describe your first impressions. Is it woody or fruity? Sharp? Do you smell flowers or citrus? Different wines have different characteristics with regards to their aroma, and with practice you would be able to discern each more easily.

Finally, we now come to actually tasting the wine, but even this has three stages, namely: The attack, evolution, and finish.

The attack refers to your first impression upon the wine hitting your palate.

The evolution refers to the middle range phase, or mid-palate, and is the actual taste of the wine. In this stage you start to discern flavors — whether they are fruity, spicy, woody, etc. Do you taste herbs and flowers?

The finish is wine tasting’s final phase. In this stage you observe for the aftertaste or how long the flavor profile stays after you swallow it. You also assess the body of the wine, whether it is light-bodied like water, medium-bodied like milk, or even full-bodied like cream. This is called the mouth feel. You also want to observe for the last flavor impression and whether it lasts for a short or long time.

All these descriptions come together to become your overall impression and observation of a certain type of wine. You may want to write these observations down so you could come back to it later on. In time and with practice you’ll be able to compare different observations and describe different wines more easily based on the ones you have previously had.

Credit :- thewineitems.com