What’s a horizontal wine tasting?
Don’t worry – you don’t have to lie down. Unless you want to 😉 Send me your wine question For a free email subscription go to home page, right columnTag Archives: how to taste wine
Where do the Plums Come From?
Or cherries? Or spice?
Why the heck should the wine smell like plums when it’s made from grapes?
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Today’s Wine Word: Wine Aroma Wheel
Doesn’t it just drive you crazy when you smell something in the wine, and you know that you know what it is, but you can’t come up with the word? Wine Aroma Wheel to the rescue!
This is one of my all-time favorite tools. I actually had this wheel blown up into poster size to teach wine-tasting classes.
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How To Taste: Smelling the Wine
Maybe you’ve laughed when you’ve seen someone in a tasting a room walking around with his nose stuck in the glass. OK – fair enough – it looks pretty silly. But, sometimes a wine is so good that smelling it is almost enough. I said almost!
OK, give the wine a good, vigorous swirl for several seconds and pop your nose in the glass (no long-distance sniffing). First and foremost, does it smell good? Every other consideration pales in importance to this! What do you smell? Is it a fresh smell or a rich smell? Have you smelled a wine with a stronger fragrance before? Or less fragrant? You’re beginning to gage aromatic intensity. Continue reading
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The Wine Just Smells Like Wine To Me…
Question from Jim: How do you learn to pick out the different aromas in wine? My friends describe things like strawberry or vanilla, but it just smell like wine to me.
Reply: You know, Jim, you have a lot of company! I’ve done countless tasting seminars in my career and when I start asking for descriptors folks tend to clam up. They’re afraid their perceptions are “wrong” (which is impossible – your perception is your perception). Or, the brave members of the group will look me straight in the eye and say “It smells like wine.”
Bravo for them! That takes some courage. It seems we all think we’re supposed to shoot out of the womb as wine experts.
People like me get so caught up in fruity, floral and barrel-derived characteristics that we forget how overwhelming fermentation aromas are. And, fermentation is what makes wine smell like wine. How to get past them? Practice.
Becoming a perceptive taster is just like developing a good golf swing. It comes with practice and gives you pleasure. Without the second half of that sentence, the first is pointless. Since wine’s only purpose is to give us pleasure, if it’s not fun for you, don’t bother. Continue reading
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