Sip, Swill, Spit

Have you ever seen those stiff upper-lipped types doing a spot of the old wine tasting malarkey? You know the form – sip, swill, spit. Yuck! Well this information has been written to help you understand the form should you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to know what to do. And don't go thinking "I'll never have to do any wine-tasting" because you just don't know that for sure and the last thing you want is to be caught unaware.

So, on with the tasting...

Study The Wine

Pick up your glass as elegantly as possible. There are two ways this can be done.

a) For chilled wines – hold the glass by the stem and don't even touch the bowl.

b) For wine served at room temperature – pick up the glass by the bowl and hold it cupped in your palm, the stem between your middle two fingers.

Now that you have the glass comfortably in your hand, hold it at a slight angle against something white. If your hostess is worth her salt, she'll have covered the table in white linen specifically for this purpose (although it does look nice, too).

Be careful not to tip the glass too far – unless you're willing to replace an expensive linen tablecloth, that is. You may also need to adjust the distance from your eyes that the glass is held at. Most find that holding it at almost arm's length is a good starting point although the very short sighted who are also absent minded enough to have left their eye glasses at home may find themselves having to hold the glass almost in front of their noses.

Once you've found the correct position, study the colour and clarity of the wine. Now you may well believe that wine's either red, pink, or white but I'm afraid, if that's the case, you're very much mistaken. Wines can be green, yellow, gold, pink, purple, or even black. Evidently, the colour of the wine will indicate the type of grape it was made from – like me, you, and Jack on the street are likely to know that!

Clarity indicates age. Young wines are more see through and cloudiness can mean there's something wrong. If that's the case, I'd suggest putting it back on the table and giving your hostess once of those 'down your nose' type looks.

The reason why you're studying the colour and clarity looks has absolutely no bearing on how the wine will taste but a proper connoisseur enjoys the beauty of wine as well as its taste and ...