Life> no use

Tips for the perfect wine tasting

(stuff.co.nz)
Updated: 2006-08-24 16:40

2. Aroma: It contributes a lot to the taste, but you'd be surprised how different the smell can sometimes be. Swirling the glass helps you get a good sniff - and can also make you look a bit of a wanker.

Taste, obviously: Here's where you can have fun with descriptions. Can you pick a fruit, food stuff or flower it might remind you of? Don't try to ape professional terms you may have read in a wine column or on the back of a bottle - let your imagination take over.

Once you get past what it might taste like, try to work out what sort of person this wine would be. As the tasting goes on you'll all become very creative. You are swallowing, right?

3. Texture: Does it have body? How does it coat the glass and run down the sides when you swirl? Don't miss your chance to make bawdy comments about the wine's "legs". How does it sit in your mouth or your throat? Does it feel thin or thick?

And finally, the judgements. Can you pick a favourite? What did you like about it? Did you hate any of them, and why? What similarities did they share? Once you identify these you're on the road to working out what makes a typical shiraz, and so on. Take turns presenting your findings to the group. Argue. Protest. Marvel at the purple prose.

At last, the unveiling. Produce the bottles from their brown paper sheathes and compare them to your findings. But please - make it non-competitive; don't keep score on who chose the most-expensive bottle. Barring obvious defects, there is no correct response to a wine; even if you don't like the bottle everybody else does, that's the correct response for you.

Best of all, your friends will realise they in fact do have tastes and preferences when it comes to wine. It has been demystified: they can actually discern between different bottles and even find a vocabulary to talk about it.

You might even turn them into wine snobs if you're not careful.