Tips for Enjoying a Wine Tasting

As a realtor with COMPASS, a leading luxury real estate brokerage, Jim Cicchese draws on more than 28 years of experience in facilitating home purchases and sales. In his free time, Jim Cicchese enjoys attending wine tastings.

To maximize your enjoyment at a wine tasting, you first need to plan your approach. Starting with sparkling or lighter wines and moving on to fuller, sweeter varieties will keep your palate from becoming overwhelmed early on. Still, you may wish to limit yourself to 10 or 15 wines, after which point you can no longer taste as effectively.

Once you have planned your tasting, you can start by visually examining your wine first for color and clarity. You are then ready to swirl the wine in the glass to release the aromas. By breathing in these scents, you can become more aware of key flavor aspects, including whether the wine is fruity, woody, or floral.

Once you have breathed in the scent of the wine, you will need about 20 to 30 seconds before your next sniff will be accurate. If you are ready to taste at this point, take only a brief smell, then sip and move the wine around your mouth. Experts suggest that it takes a full minute to fully appreciate the nuances of each wine.

By the time you finish tasting, you should be able to articulate how sweet or acidic the wine is. You should also be able to identify the wine’s dryness, higher levels of which indicate more tannin in the wine itself. If you take time to describe the wine before moving on, you can more fully appreciate each taste.