If you're tasting a a wine that's a chilled variety, don't hold the main bowl of the glass of wine, you must handle the glass by the stem.



For room temperature wine ? handle the glass of wine by placing it between your two middle fingers so that the bowl rests on your palm.

The glass should be relaxed in your hand, hold it at a slight angle in front of something white. Hold the glass at arms length, but take care not the spill the wine! This will not impress. Depending on your sight you may change the distance your eye is from the wine.

This is the time where you can study the wine, here you are looking at the colour and clarity of the wine. Wines come in many colours and not the pink, red and white, by studying the clarity you should be able to see that wines can be green, yellow, gold, pink, purple, or even black. As many people are aware the colour of the wine is governed by the grape, it is always worth dropping this in to conversations to astonish wine novices if you are going for the ?fake it? approach, but be cautious you are not going to win many prizes for the information.

Clarity is an indication of age. A younger wine will generally show as quite clear, if a wine appears to be cloudy this can indicate a issue with the wine and I suggest you don't drink it. Studying the colour of the wine doesn't have any influence on the taste, but any great wine lover will always appreciate the beauty of the wine as well as its taste.

The Bouquet.

You should still have the glass held in the way we discussed earlier, first you should swirl the wine, rotate your hand slightly so that the wine swirls around the wine glass, be safe as to not to splatter your wine.You should find it very easy to swirl the wine, you won't have to be wild with the glass, slight movement will give you what you want.

The idea behind all this swirling is to lift the wine's aroma out of the wine altogether and into the empty area of the bowl thus allowing it to be inhaled and savored. Move your glass to your nose as politely as you're able and bring it in slightly beneath the end. Breath in deeply. Savor for a few seconds and then inhale again. It's a good idea to exhale after those two inhalations or you might discover yourself going dizzy.

When you savor the wine and converse about the fragrance, try to be honest with the things you can smell, you may be surprised to find you can smell things like liquorice, flowers or pears, if you can be honest you will enjoy the evening more.

Tasting The Wine Time

This part is not about glugging great big mouthfuls and glasses of wine down like no tomorrow, you be slow to enjoy the tasting of the wine, furthermore in any one wine evening or party you may taste over 14 different wines, so take your time.

Drink some of the wine, don't take a mouthful, only put a small bit of wine into your mouth initially. Now close your mouth and move the wine around your mouth and tongue to release the taste, you can either drink the wine or spit the wine out, if you swallow breath out at the same time. Now you should be able to have the full taste of the wine, again be brave and tell everyone what you can taste: the dryness, flavours and if you liked it.

Its is as simple as that, this rough article is not going to make you a Jilly Cooper after a single read, but it may help you to get more out of your wine and wine experience. If it still sounds like the perfect hell, then let me tell you that I used to know nothing about wine, but with a little practice you will find tasting wine will be very addictive.