We all love wine and, as the ideal drink to accompany both a special banquet and daily fayre, we would all like to drink it every day (in moderation of course).
Here you will find a few top tips on drinking wine from Father Anthony who enthusiastically shares with us the vast expertise he has acquired at many a table surrounded by many a good wine:
Just as each one of us has our own personality, so every wine has its own character: respect it, don’t ignore it.
Wine Tasting :
Ideally, there are five stages to wine tasting. These focus on three senses : firstly sight, then smell and finally taste.
Of course, the most important thing is to enjoy the wine and these five steps will help you to discover and fully appreciate the pleasures of drinking wine :
1. Look at the colour of the wine : the golden or ruby highlights in the body, the depth or finesse of its colour, how bright and clear it is.
2. Before tasting the wine, next consider its scent. Inhale deeply. The nose is a very important organ and you need to train it to appreciate the first impression of a wine, the initial aroma that is released when the wine is uncorked. This is called the first “nose”.
3. Staying with the scent, inhale deeply once again but this time after swirling the glass in order to allow the wine’s secondary aroma to be released.
4. The first sip of the wine will allow its taste – and particularly its mellowness - to overwhelm the taste buds.
5. Take a second mouthful and draw in some air between the lips before moving the wine around the mouth. Feel its richness and depth, how short- or long-lived its flavour is.
These five reverential acts will allow you to get to know precisely how good the wine you are drinking is. Again it is important to stress that more than anything, you should enjoy the wine. However, enjoying wine means more than simply liking the taste. Wine should complement your mood. You rarely feel the same way from one day to the next and therefore one wine will match a moment better than another. As a result, each wine taster will have his/her own feel for a wine and should therefore learn to enjoy not only tasting the wine but also talking about it and sharing opinions with others.
While it is beneficial to compare wines, we should always try to compare wines of the same category. There is no sense in trying to compare a great Fitou wine that leaves an unforgettable memory with the taster, with a “little” vin de Pays which could be equally promising in its own place.
A very experienced oenologist advised us to take particular note of the completeness of a wine: is there harmony and balance throughout the five stages of tasting? If you can sense any disharmony in the aroma, for example, the wine will almost certainly lack an overall coherence.
Wine and food should always complement one another. The greatest sin you can commit is to serve a bottle of red wine with a chicory salad : there is no escaping the fact that chicory will turn even the best wines to vinegar.
Remember that sometimes a wine will not be at its best until the second glass. The reasons for this are many: the temperature might not be right or the wine may need to breathe a while to release some acids that have built up. Be patient.
And finally don’t be afraid to drink a wine that you opened the day before. Some wines – for example, red wines – will benefit from standing for a while after being opened. This can in fact improve the wine and it will give you even greater satisfaction.
