The Art of Wine

When you stroll into your local liquor store, you are presented with a wide variety of wine. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Pinotage and a whole bunch of other names that are hard to spell. To me wine has always just fallen into two varieties, namely red and white. My knowledge of wine extends only to drinking it, but apparently there is a whole lot more to it than that....

There is pomp and circumstance, there are procedures and rules to follow before you can even start drinking wine. Apparently first you have to look at it. Pour it into your glass and just gaze longingly and appraisingly at it. One site describes this as follows:

Step 1
"The first step in tasting a wine happens before you actually taste the wine. When the wine is first poured into your glass — before swirling it, smelling it, or sipping it — just look at it. The reason you look at the wine is to get a sense of its color, as a wine’s color can tell you a lot about the wine you’ll be drinking. When doing this, many people like to hold their glass of wine against a white background, as that helps you see the hue of the color more easily."

This seems a bit strange to me, as I already know what my wine looks like. It is either red or it is white. I don't need to ogle it in order to appreciate it! Then there is step two; the swirl.

Step 2
"Once you’ve looked at the wine in your glass and determined what the color means, the next step in tasting is to swirl and agitate the wine. Everyone has their own unique technique for swirling wine, and that’s OK. Some people leave the bottom of the wine glass firmly planted on the table and just make a few circles with the base, while others like to pick the wine glass up and slightly flick their wrist, thereby making little circles in the air. Finally, others like to be extremely showy with their swirling, making grandiose motions like they’re getting ready to lasso a steer (we’d suggest avoiding this final type of swirling — it can be seen as obnoxious to your fellow drinkers)."

Apparently this oxygenates the wine, allowing it to breathe. Why my wine needs to fill its "lungs" before I can drink it also baffles me. And the sentence "Once you’ve looked at the wine in your glass and determined what the color means" also gets to me. It is red! Or white! Why would it mean anything?! Then, apparently, it is on to step three, The Sniff!

Step 3
"Now that you’ve looked at the wine and swirled it around in your glass, there’s only one more step before you get to drink it: smelling the wine. When you smell a wine, you’re preparing your brain for the wine you’re about to taste. Our sense of smell has a profound affect on the way our brain processes flavor. If you want to better understand just how profound, hold your nose and then put a strawberry in your mouth and start to chew. Halfway through chewing, release your nose. You’ll notice right away how much more you actually taste when you have your sense of smell. This is why smell is so important when it comes to tasting a wine."

Preparing my brain for the wine I'm about to taste??? I bought the wine, I opened it, I poured it into my glass. My brain, body and soul are all prepared! There is no need for additional preparation in my opinion. I just want some wine! And then there are the subtle aromas, or notes as they are called. This just gets even more weird....

"When you go to smell the wine, stick your nose all the way into the glass and close your eyes — sure you might feel silly doing it, but you’re going to notice a lot more smells this way — then breathe in deep. As you smell the wine, think about what scents you’re picking up, and keep in mind that there are no wrong answers! If it’s a white wine, maybe you smell bananas, lemon rind, pineapple or even that scent that is always in the air when you go to the beach. If it’s a red wine, you may smell prunes, cherries, strawberries, peppers, plums or tobacco. In both situations, you may say you just smell grapes, and that is totally fine too."

Looking at the description above, I suspect someone sampled the wine before writing it! Call me plain and uncultured if you like, but I just like sharing some wine with friends and family, chatting about every day things and enjoying the company I am in. I suspect if I followed the steps above I would most likely be drinking it all by myself, as everyone else would have gotten bored and left....