If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, this re-run of a golden oldie post is old news (I hope. Or maybe a refresher course isn’t such a bad idea.)
You also know that I don’t usually talk about personal things. But, the thing is that my blog posts have been a little spotty lately and I don’t want you to think I don’t care or have gotten lazy.
First, I want to thank you for reading – especially my subscribers. I put my heart and soul into my work and it makes my day when you take the time to comment or even just click “like.”
My husband is seriously ill and that has been the absolute priority over the last few weeks and will probably continue to be over the next few. I believe he will come out of this okay. Please keep your fingers crossed.
The second priority is to keep the money flowing in so we can pay our bills, so when I’m not at the hospital I’m writing for my winery clients. I hope you don’t mind me sharing this info.
But, I’m still here. I’ll write new stuff when I can and try to keep those weekly videos up but I may go quiet for awhile or post another re-run here and there.
That said, here’s the actual post. I chose this one because it’s one of the most common questions of all. Thank you, again. Nancy
Why Swirl the Wine?
After Jim wrote, saying what a lot of people are afraid to say – that wine just smells like wine to him and he doesn’t often notice aromas like strawberry or spice – I promised some wine-tasting lessons. It will help if you have a couple of tasting techniques under your belt first, so here we go with swirling.
With all the fru-fru associated with wine, you might wonder whether swirling is practical or pretentious. It’s not only fun – it’s very practical. I like to think of it as getting more for my money. The best way to find out why it’s smart to swirl your wine is to do an experiment. Get yourself a glass of wine. It shouldn’t be too cold – cold wine isn’t expressive, so if you’ve pulled the wine out of the fridge give it a 1/2 hour, or so, to warm up a bit.
Don’t fill your glass more than 1/3 – 1/2 full or you’ll end up wearing the wine (I wear wine on a daily basis – I’ve come to think of it as perfume). Put your nose in the glass and take a good whiff. Hope it smells good!
Now, if you haven’t swirled your wine before, the easiest thing to do is to put the glass on a flat surface and grip the stem close to the base. Swirl briskly to get the liquid really moving in the glass. After swirling vigorously for several seconds, smell it again. Difference?
More – right? It really works! Aromatic compounds that were bound in the liquid have been released as vapor and all those lovely fragrances pop right out. It makes it so much easier to get a good, general impression of the wine and also to begin noticing specific fragrances that were elusive before. This is a great technique to use for getting the most out of just about any wine but you might want to go easy on the fizzy stuff. Don’t want to swirl the bubbles away!
Next up: Slurping!
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