Is it Necessary to Swirl the Wine?

Question from Jess: In your last post you referred to swirling the wine. Is that really necessary? What difference does it make? I feel really silly and pretentious doing it.

Reply: Hi, Jess. Thanks for writing! I don’t know that it’s necessary, but it can certainly add to your pleasure.

You be the judge. Try this experiment: Pour yourself a glass of any sort of wine, preferably not too cold (cold wine doesn’t have much of a fragrance, as we discussed in that last post). Don’t fill it too full. A half-glass is fine. If the wine has been in the fridge, just take it out and wait 30-45 minutes to do the experiment.

Smell the wine. BTW, when you smell the wine, you should actually put your nose in the glass – no long-distance sniffing! Smells good? Now, set the glass down on the table 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 the wine again. Notice the difference?

Q & A: Do Those Wine Aerators Work?

Question from Sean: Do those wine aerators work? 

Reply: Hi, Sean! Thanks for writing. This is a question that’s come up a lot over the past few years. 

Let me tell you about a little experiment I did. I got together a bunch of friends who are probably more experienced with wine than a lot of people. I served them 2 wines, blind. One was poured fresh out of the bottle and the other went through a wine aerator.

Their job was to tell me which glass had been aerated and, also, which glass they preferred.

You guessed it. The results were all over the board. Nearly half the group was wrong about which one had been aerated and there was no clear preference. For those of you who insist on a scientific, carefully controlled approach, this wasn’t it. This was done very casually. But, nevertheless, it’s hard not to conclude that the aerators probably don’t work.