How to Swirl Wine for Wine Tasting

Have you ever been out on a date at a nice restaurant and had your date swirl their wine around and around in their wine glass? The reason your date did this was so that all of the flavors of the wine blend together giving the wine a fuller richer flavor. If you are dining with a true wine lover, the ritual swirling will be continued with a sniff, swirl, sip, swish, spit routine.

Instructions

1. Take a few seconds to just look at your wine before you ever swirl your wine in its glass. You want to observe its exact coloring, bits of sediment resting in the bottom of your wine glass and if the color deviates from one spot in the glass to another. Next place your nose as closely to the glass and sniff the wine, don’t sniff so hard that you actually inhale drops of wine into your nose, just a little sniff will do. Notice if your wine smell like berries, grapes or the wooden barrel where it was fermented.

2. Swirl your glass of wine. When swirling your wine it is important to be very careful to swirl gently. If you are too enthusiastic with your swirling the wine may slosh over the sides of the glass.

3. Pinch your wine glass between your fingers; don’t grasp it so hard that you snap the delicate glass.

4. Rotate your wrist gently in a counter-clockwise motion. Rotate with just enough speed that the wine starts to swirl along the sides of the glass.

5. Look for the wine trails on the sides of your wine glass. These trails indicate the wine’s alcohol content. The higher number of trails, which are often called tears or wine legs, the more alcohol your wine contains.

6. Place your nose near the glass' brim and inhale. Notice if the swirling changed the wine’s bouquet.