Ever Wonder? What is the Right Amount of Wine to Pour into a Glass?

Well, first let me start by saying you can never have too much wine, right? While that may be true, you can actually have too much wine in your glass. Pouring the ‘right’ amount of wine into a wine glass can actually enhance your enjoyment of the wine.

While we taste with our tongue, it only provides us with a limited amount of information. If you’ve ever tried eating something (like a slice of orange) while holding your nose closed, you’ll know that food has limited flavor when you don’t include the food smells or aromas that enter through your nose.

This is true with wines. While our tongues can only detect the basic tastes (sweet, salt, bitter and sour), our nose is capable of detecting thousands of aromas. Put another way, taste refers to what’s going on inside our mouth including our tongue. But, aromas are detected inside our noses and relates specifically to our sense of smell. Put them both together and you get flavor!

Now, this is where the wine glass comes in. If you fill your wine glass to the top, as shown in the picture, and take a sip, you’ll certainly get taste on your tongue and a bit of aroma as the glass approaches your mouth. But, if instead you fill the glass just about one-third full, just to the point where the glass is at its widest point, you’ll leave the upper two-thirds for the aromas. And, by giving your glass a slight swirl (yes, wine drinkers swirl for a reason!), you’ll release even more aromas into the bowl of your wine glass. Then, when the wine glass approaches your mouth, take a sniff and then a sip. The wine will then have even more flavor.

This is a simple yet very effective trick to get even more enjoyment out of a glass of wine. Cheers!

Where Do All Those Flavors in Wine Come From?

There are only two ingredients in wine: grapes and yeast.  Yet, white wines can be described as having flavors that include lemon, lime, grapefruit, apple, peach, pear and orange.  And red wines can be described as having flavors of cherry, raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, plum and fig.  And then there are descriptions of vanilla, butterscotch, caramel, chocolate, tobacco, leather, and even tar, just to name a few.  But, if wine is only made from grapes and yeast, how do wines get all those other flavors? 

In a past blog, we reviewed taste and smell as being the elements by which we get our perception of flavors.

But, let's go a bit deeper and do some further exploration of where all those flavors in wine come from.  Basically, wine's flavors come from the grapes, the fermentation process and through aging.

Each of these components provides its own set of flavor compounds that combine to give each wine its own characteristics.

So, next time we'll dive into the most important influence on wine's flavor - grapes. Until then, Cheers!

Where You Drink a Wine Affects How it Tastes

Have you ever noticed that wines can taste really good at a restaurant, wine bar or especially at a winery? It's the whole experience, not just the aromas and flavors, that affect our sense of taste.

As I've discovered, a $15 bottle of wine, when served in a high-end restaurant (where they charge you $45 for that $15 bottle), will taste especially good. Somehow, the lavish surroundings, the great service and the wonderful company at the table just makes the whole wine experience so much better.

And, at a winery it can be even more powerful. You are typically in a beautiful setting surrounded by vineyards and being served by someone who is very knowledgeable about the wine or maybe even the winemaker. This experience can significantly heighten the taste of the wine.

This fact is well understood by the publications that do wine ratings. So much so, that they don't allow their tasters to review or rate wines at wineries or restaurants.  They ensure their tasters are in a neutral setting in order to allow them to focus only on the wine (which, by the way, they are tasting 'blind' with no knowledge of who produced the wine or what it costs).

So, keep in mind that the amazing bottle of wine you recently had at that fancy restaurant was probably made even better by all the other glamour around you. And, that's exactly what the wine experience is all about. Cheers!

Beyond the 5 S's of Wine Tasting

Drinking wine is a pleasurable experience that is quite simple. And, as winemaker Charles Smith puts it "It's just wine. Drink it." But for many people, wine tasting can be a very intimidating experience. But it shouldn't be.

In the past, I've written about how to visit wineries and how to have a great experience tasting wines. And whether it be at a winery, a restaurant, wine bar, or at home, there are simple things that you can do to enhance the simple enjoyment of a glass of wine.

The Five S's of wine have been written about many times by others but here's a quick review:

1. See - Look at the wine in your glass and note the color and clarity. White wines can range from nearly clear to pale yellow, straw color, or golden. Red wines can be maroon, purple, ruby, garnet, or deep red. Both white and red wines can take on a brown hue with age.  All wines should be free of sediment.
2. Swirl - By swirling the wine within the glass you give it an opportunity to gain further contact with air and release its aromas.  A wine right out of a bottle may need a little exposure to air. This exposure will quickly take away any sharp odors and can help soften or mellow the wine.
3. Sniff - Stick your nose into the wine glass and take a sniff. You can get a very quick idea of what the wine will taste like and you may even detect some of the fruit aromas. Try sniffing with each individual nostril. You may find a real difference. And, by the way, there is no need to sniff the cork from the bottle. A wine server may present it to you, but you only need to take a brief look at it to ensure it doesn't show any obvious signs of leakage.
4. Sip - Take a small sip, drawing in some air as you sip, and let it stay in your mouth for a while. You can even swish it around a bit in your mouth. This will give you an opportunity to really get all the flavors that the wine has to offer.
5. Swallow - By allowing the wine to go through the back of your mouth and down your throat you will finally get the complete wine experience from your mouth and nasal passages.

But, in addition to these classic five S's, there are a few other things that can enhance your enjoyment of wine.  The glass itself is important. It should be clean and clear with a bowl large enough to hold a nice pour of wine (around 5 ounces) and still have plenty of room left. A wine glass should only be filled about one-third of the way. The remaining 'empty' space in the glass is left to capture the wine's aromas.

The wine also needs to be at the right temperature. Reds should not be served room temperature and whites should not come straight out of the kitchen refrigerator. A red should be served at cellar temperature, 58-62 degree F, and a white should be 45-50 degrees F.  These optimal temperatures allow you to best enjoy the wine's full flavors. I recently had a friend tell me he didn't like Chardonnay until a recent visit to a winery. What he learned was that his only experience with Chardonnay was drinking it at refrigerator temperature. When the winery served their Chardonnay at 48-50 F, it was an entirely different and better experience, allowing him to actually taste all the flavors in the wine.

Decanting a red wine can also make a big difference. It doesn't need to be a fancy decanter, just one that can hold an entire bottle of wine and give the wine lots of surface area exposed to air.  Filling a decanter up to the neck does little for the wine so find a vessel that has a broad bottom such that you are only filling it about halfway. Once you've poured the wine into the decanter, pour yourself a sip right away and note the wine's character.  Give it thirty minutes in the decanter and try it again. It should smooth out and soften. You can continue decanting for an hour our two, but beyond that the wine can become over oxidized and start to become a bit stale.

Once again you may be asking yourself "Why bother?"  Well, if you follow these simple steps you'll find that you will quickly start to understand the differences in wines and better determine your real wine preferences.

But, above all else, keep it simple, take wine tasting slowly, and enjoy! Cheers!

Oak and Its Effect on Wine's Flavor

Last time we discussed how all the fruit flavors get into wine. We discussed that wines don't actually contain fruit other than grapes, but the grapes, the soil they are grown in, the fermentation process, and the aging process can impart other fruit flavors.

Another way that flavors can be added to wine is through oak aging.  Oak barrels add additional quality, character and smoothness to wines and can create flavors of vanilla, butterscotch, coconut, toffee, caramel, butter, mocha, coffee and smokiness. 

The vanilla flavor in wines come directly from compounds in the oak itself. But often the interiors of wine barrels are 'toasted' over an open flame. This process affects the degree of flavor added to the wine. Barrels may be toasted light, medium or heavy. Light toasting of the barrels results in wines having flavors of butterscotch, toffee, caramel, coconut, and butter. Wine flavors of mocha, coffee and smokiness are brought out of the oak by heavier toasting of the barrels. 

Oak barrel aging is used for most red and white wines of the world. But, it comes with a cost.  French oak, which is considered the 'gold standard' of oak barrels, can cost $800 to $4000 dollars each.  And an oak barrel is only able to add flavors to wines through two to three uses. After that, oak barrels become 'neutral' and are simply used as vessels for storing wines with little or no flavor being added. Oak barrels from the U.S. cost $350 - $500 each and, like French oak, only impart flavor during their first two to three uses.

One oak tree can only produce enough wood for approximately two barrels, or 50 cases of wine. And, when aging wine in a barrel, the wine only comes in contact with the oak on the inside of the barrel. So, winemakers seek alternative ways of getting oak flavors in their wines. Options include adding oak chips, oak cubes or oak staves directly into the wine as it ages in stainless steel tanks. This allows the entire surface area of the oak to be in contact the wine and is much less costly than barrels.

So start paying attention to these wonderful flavors in your wines. And remember, all the flavors are coming from grapes, yeast and sometimes oak.  Cheers!