Wine Tasting 101

I was just now going thru the Oregonian on-line and some wine tasting articles caught my eye. Reading the following article caused me to giggle a bit as I thought back to the time that Tom and I and our friend Daniel went to Zupan's after a sushi dinner and needed a diversion for Daniel as he would be attending a family function. Keep in mind that this moment was before our magical tranformation into the world of wine and we had no clue what a wine tasting was...so here we are wandering around Zupan's and the wine steward asked Daniel and Tom if they would be interested in tasting some wine...well sure! She barely had the wine poured and Daniel slammed it back before she had the opportunity to describe the wine. Just imagine the look of surprise on the wine stewards face as he replaced his glass to the table.

We have come a long way since that moment and have started to appreciate a good bottle of wine...heck we even enjoy the not so good wine....enjoy the following article on wine tasting!

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We all know how to sip, gulp and guzzle wine. Really, tasting wine can be just as fun, but it takes some focus. Here's how to sip like a professional:

The look: Hold your glass against a white or pale background and note the color. If it's a white wine, it might be a shade of straw, lemon or gold; if it's red, it might be ruby, garnet, mahogany, brick or black. Get a sense of the colors and you'll begin to draw conclusions about what they mean. For example, with red wine, the purply-red colors of a young wine fade to browns with age. An older red wine might be mahogany to brick in color, while a highly concentrated younger red might be garnet to black.

The sniff: Hold the stem and slide the glass in tiny circles on a flat surface to swirl the wine and release its aroma. Tip the glass and bury your nose in it. What do you smell? Is it the toasted, caramel-vanilla or woodlike scent of new oak barrels? Apples, pears, citrus or tropical fruits in a white wine? Cherries, plums or berries in a red? Anything you smell -- leather, gasoline, pencil shavings -- is worth noting.