Wine tasting: some important rules

You can’t say that you have truly known Tuscany without having tasted its wines, to get in touch with the flavors of this land. In fact, food and wine attracts thousands of visitors every year, curious to savor the tastes of a region famous throughout the world for its fine wines and traditional dishes. During your stay you can participate in visits and tastings in the cellars, a unique opportunity to get to know the world of viticulture up close and to enjoy moments of pleasure.

wine tasting degustazione vino in Toscana

What does it mean to taste a wine?

Many people think that a table, perhaps set with a good cheese board, is enough to put into practice a perfect tasting. In reality it’s not like that, since tasting wine is an action that also requires other precautions that don’t involve simply sitting down at the table and tasting various types.

Among the useful pre-tasting advice, the first is to avoid the use of perfumes, creams or products that have strong smells. As you can well imagine, the latter would inevitably compromise the perception of some precious essences of the wine. Furthermore, it is not recommended to eat spicy or in any case strong flavors before a tasting because, as in the previous case, the perception of the wine would be completely altered.

Tra i consigli utili pre degustazione, il primo è di evitare l’utilizzo di profumi, creme o prodotti che abbiano odori intensi. Come si può ben immaginare, questi ultimi andrebbero inevitabilmente a compromettere la percezione di alcune preziose essenze del vino. Inoltre, è sconsigliato mangiare speziato o comunque sapori forti prima di una degustazione poiché, come nel caso precedente, la percezione del vino andrebbe completamente alterata.

degustazione mgiliori vini della toscana in italia

Another aspect to consider: how do you hold a glass of wine in your hand?

The glass should be held in the hand with as few fingers as possible, 2 maximum 3, using the stem or the base. The main reasons are 3:

Fingers could grease the glass, compromising the visual analysis of the wine.
The hand warms: holding the glass under the goblet warms the wine, altering the serving temperature, and consequently also the aromatic and olfactory profile.
The hand could have smells that could compromise the olfactory analysis of the wine: if you have smoked you could have residues on your fingertips, or you could have residues of the perfume of the soap you used to wash your hands.

Let us now analyze in detail the three phases for a correct tasting.

The first phase passes right through the eyes: hence the use of a glass that enhances the beauty of the wine you are tasting. In front of a beautiful glass, all you have to do is write down the wines you are going to taste and write your impressions next to each of them. A tip: divide the sensations into categories (visual, olfactory and gustatory).

Then it's the turn of smell. Bring your nose close to the glass and, after having slightly swirled the wine, inhale to welcome its scent. In this case the advice is to try to identify the scents. Wines hold many suggestions and, in this regard, you could use simple categorizations. For example, dividing into wines with fruity, floral, earthy, spice or aged aromas.

By doing so, your very personal tasting card will be taking shape. Once this is done, we move on to the last step, the one that finally also requires the use of the taste buds: taste, exactly.

In this case, take a sip and hold it in your mouth: flavor and aroma will give you the final picture of what the wine has to offer. Once your sip of wine is in your mouth, even before letting yourself be carried away by the pleasure of tasting it, try to understand the physical sensations that the wine is transmitting to you: is it soft, dry, heavy or light?

Identify the body of the wine, your structure and what emotions it arouses: wine always has its own weight, a physical character.

And this is how you complete your wine tasting.

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Wine tasting: some important rules

What does it mean to taste a wine?

Let us now analyze in detail the three phases for a correct tasting.

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