How to Swirl and Smell Wine

If you're just pouring your wine and sipping it, you're skipping the most crucial parts of enjoying a great glass. Swirling and sniffing. As wine ages, it needs air to help fully release its aromas and flavors. Swirling helps. You also want to swirl the wine to expose the actual liquid to the air, to run it up the sides of the glass and get an extra look at its color. The hue of the wine and its aromas will tell you a lot about what you're about to taste, before you even bring the glass to your lips. It's important to smell the wine because smell and taste are so intricately connected. Try swishing a little wine in your mouth with your nose closed and you'll see just how much you need smell to enjoy the flavor.You don't have to be a wine snob to swirl and sniff with grace. Here are a few quick and easy steps to show you how:

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Bottle of wine
• Wine glass

How to Swirl and Smell Wine

1. Before you swirl: When you first pop the cork of the wine you want to let the bottle rest unopened for about a half an hour. This allows the wine to open up and release its full aroma.

2. Swirl: To swirl the wine, gently hold the glass in your hand and tilt it back and forth causing the wine to move in a circular motion inside the glass. Be careful to do this with a half glass of wine or less.

3. Examine color: The drops, called tears, that trickle back down the inside of the glass after you've swirled tell a lot about the wine's age. If the wine has a brighter hue it is probably a newer wine. Older wines are darker in color.

4. Sniff: Place your face directly over the wine glass and put your nose in the glass as far as it will go. It seems embarrassing at first, but this is how aficionados do it. Now take three deep and quick breaths in, taking in the aroma fully. Concentrate on the different elements of the scent that you're detecting. Woodsy? Herbal? Fruity? This is the fun part.

Tips & Warnings

• You can also detect if a wine is spoiled by smelling it. If you get a whiff of damp cardboard or gym socks, the wine may be tainted with cork. When these tastes are evident the wine is said to be "corked."
• After you've swirled and smelled your glass of wine, you may want to ask your server for a decanter. This helps aerate the wine and filters out sediment in older wines..

Resources

• Check out the Food and Wine column in USA Today for more great info and helpful hints on everything wine.

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