Understanding our wines

For most people,

the art of drinking wine is only accessible to elite of specialists. Yet appreciating the aromas of good coffee and toasts or trying to identify the flavors of a delicate dish is already a step towards that learning.
The tasting should aim to discover with curiosity and fun each element that composes a wine:
Its color, its flavor, its aromas, its density, its body, its balance, its attack, its nuances etc…
The tasting engages our five senses and go through 3 distinct steps:

Step 1

1) The visual examination
2) The olfactory examination
3) The gustatory examination

To this end, you must use the right glass. The ideal one should be a stemmed glass so you won’t warm up the wine within your palm. The base has to be wider to allow you to swirl your wine and a narrower top in order for you to preserve its very volatiles aromas. It is usually called the “tulip” wine glass.

Step 2

1- The visual examination:

it goes through different steps and observations and can reveal hundreds of nuances and different colors.
a) First, you will have to determine that its surface called the disk shows its brilliance and mirror-like aspect. This will promise of a healthy and perfectly created wine. At that step, its robe will be determined; it may be dense, dark or translucent.
b) Secondly, the light should let appear a glossy and limpid beverage, deprived of cloudiness called the turbidity of the wine (NTU). This observation will show that the wine has been properly filtered or vinified. On the other hand, a “cloudy” or loaded wine would be broken, unfit or spoiled. This analysis will determine the robe of the wine.

Step 3

2- The olfactory examination:

it is a difficult phase that calls for the memory of flavors and that requires to define them with thousands of words and nuances. We refer to as the nose of the wine. The nose can be woody and vanilla, fruity and floral, animal, mineral or vegetal: all these elements compose its bouquet.

Step 4

3- The gustatory examination:

: it is the last and conclusive step which confirms the two previous examinations. It’s called the mouthfeel of the wine. It is evaluated during three successive steps:
a) The attack : frank or silky b) The mid-palate phase : wide or uniform c) The finish : short or long-lasting

Step 5

To this end, allow for a generous pour into the glass up to the third of its capacity, take a sip of wine, but do not swallow. Roll the wine around in your mouth exposing it to all of your taste buds. So that you will be able to detect sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Pay attention to the texture and you’ll be able to say if it is young, structured, tannic, fat, long in the mouth...etc.

Step 6