Become an Expert: 6 S’s of Wine Tasting

Feel like an expert the next time you sip a glass of wine.

If sipping a nice glass of wine seems at all intimidating, you can now relax.

Blue Sky VineyardsWe talked with winemaker Karen Hand, at Blue Sky Vineyards, for a little guidance.

She gave us the six S’s of wine tasting.

With these easy to remember tips, you will be an expert the next time you pop open a bottle of your favorite vino.

  1. Swirl it
    Swishing your glass of wine around in a circle allows air to get into the wine. This helps to release the aromas of the wine into the glass.
    How: Swirl your wine by holding your glass by its base and moving it around in a circle. Make sure you do this on a flat surgace.
  2.  See it
    Look at the color of the wine. Is it a light gold or dark gold? Is it a rosy pink or a rich red?  You also want to make sure that it doesn’t have any browning in it. That is a bad sign.
  3. Sniff it
    You want to see what the wine smells like. What sorts of fruit can you smell? Is it flowery at all? Karen at Blue Sky Vineyards tells wine drinkers to really put their nose into the glass when they sniff. You may even want to sniff it more than once.
  4. Sip it
    Wine is made to enjoy slowly. You don’t typically want to gulp it down. When you take a sip, you should taste some of the same smells you sniffed. If you smelled red raspberry, you should taste raspberry. If the wine smells different than it tastes, that is a sure sign your wine is not good.
  5. Savor it
    Karen says you should take time to really think about what you tasted. Let the wine linger on your palate.
  6. Swallow or sip
    Ideally, you will swallow your glass of wine. Karen says wine snobs, though, might spit out the wine if they don’t like it.

Remember, drinking wine is all about the experience.

“You don’t want to sit there and guzzle a glass or a bottle of wine,” Brett Morrison said, the winemaker at StarView Vineyards. “It can catch up to you fairly quickly. So it’s not like a 3 percent beer. Not only that, but it is more enjoyable to sit there and sip on it and get that lingering, lasting taste in your mouth.”