In wine tasting circles, you sometimes hear about four S’s - Sniffing, Swirling, Sipping and Spitting. They are meant to be informative for someone new to wine tasting. But sniffing and sipping are so obvious as to be a little patronizing. As for spitting, we’ll leave that to the professional tasters who can taste over 100 wines in a day. Most of us are just wine lovers; we’ll swallow. As for the Swirling, there is something to that. And we would like to add two more useful (and fun) S’s – Slurping and Sloshing.
Swirling
Swirling the wine in your glass does a couple good things. It magnifies the intensity of the aroma within the glass and helps to dissipate certain unpleasant volatile compounds.
The wine in the glass releases aroma esters from the top surface of the wine. The greater the surface area, the more aroma released. A wine glass with a larger diameter has more surface area contributing to the aroma intensity. So to a point, bigger is better. Even more important is to have a wine glass that is narrower at the rim than the main body. That helps create a pocket of aromatic air inside the glass slowing down the dissipation of the aroma. So shape matters, also.
Starting with a larger glass doesn’t mean that you want to pour more wine into the glass. It’s best to keep the amount of wine in the glass relatively low. That leaves a larger surface area inside the glass.
Swirling the wine glass puts a thin coating of wine higher up on the inside of the wine glass. This thin coating quickly evaporates releasing aroma esters. By swirling the wine before sniffing it, you can create a much larger surface area for evaporation, noticeably enhancing the intensity of the aroma. As the level of the wine gets lower as you drink it, more surface area on the inside of the glass is available for evaporation after swirling.
You don’t need to go overboard with the swirling to get the aroma intensity magnification benefit. You don’t actually have to swirl. Alternatively, just tip the glass and rotate it to get that coating of wine on the inside of the glass. Wait a bit for some evaporation to take place then sniff. A couple of successive deep sniffs helps. Get you nose fight into the glass! This happens naturally when taking a sip with a small amount of wine in a large wine glass.
Swirling also has another benefit – aeration. This is similar to the oxidation effects from decanting. Wine sometimes contains volatile aroma compounds known as mercaptans or thiols which can be unpleasant. Mixing oxygen with the wine allows those compounds to oxidize and dissipate. While mixing air with the wine may only take a short time, the oxidizing doesn’t happen that fast. Depending on the circumstances, the chemical reaction to get rid of the thiols could take an hour. However, it does go faster with higher temperatures.
Another benefit of aeration is the perception of softer tannins. Science casts some doubt on this, however. The amount of oxygen that reacts with the wine is quite small. That small amount is enough to eliminate the volatile compounds, but only a small fraction of what would be needed to alter the tannins structure. Maybe that doesn’t matter. If we think it helps, that may be good enough.
Couple the benefits of aeration from swirling with having only a small amount of wine left in your glass and some of the best tastes of a wine could be those last few sips!
Slurping
We tend to think that we get the aroma just from sniffing a wine. That is, using the orthonasal olfaction by breathing in the aroma through the nose. But there is another pathway for aroma – retronasal olfaction – that occurs while we’re drinking the wine. The aroma molecules reach the olfactory receptors from the mouth (oral cavity) back up into the nasal cavity.
Flavors are a combination of taste and retronasal olfaction. For many people the intensity of the wine aroma can be greater from the retronasal pathway than from strictly sniffing. You can intensify that retronasal aroma with a simple technique – slurping.
With some wine left in your mouth, breathe in through your mouth. It can be surprising how much better you can get the aroma compared to just sniffing.
If you leave too much wine in your mouth when you breathe in over the wine you could create a slurping sound. This could be good if you want to be tagged as a pretentious wine snob.
Or. After you swallow a mouthful of wine, quickly breathe in through your mouth. This is almost as good as slurping, but without the slurp, and if you are subtle about it, no one (other then your spouse) will notice.
Sloshing
Sloshing a sample of wine around in your mouth helps in getting the most satisfaction from a good wine. (On the other hand, it can intensify some undesirable characteristics of a bad wine.)
By spreading the wine over all parts of your mouth, more taste receptors get involved.
Unless you want to get tagged with the dreaded pretentious wine snob label, learn to do the sloshing subtly without over doing it.
About The Author
C. R. (Rich) Abbruscato is part business man, part wine lover. He is founder of RNK Products, Inc. (using the brand Telehealth Technologies), a company dedicated to the design, development and manufacture of telemedicine medical devices and telemedicine systems. Rich is also a regular contributor to www.ehrguide.org, a resource for small to-mid size medical practices. Rich enjoys talking about wine as much as talking about telemedicine. But you can’t drink telemedicine.
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