Wine Tasting Etiquette

The Do's and Don'ts of Proper Wine Tasting Etiquette | Estilo Tendances

Many people drink wine informally or on special occasions. A wine tasting is a formal event intended to judge the quality of different vintages. The idea is to evaluate the wine to decide which you would like to add to your cellar. Since high-quality wine can be very expensive, you do not want to spend a lot of money on something you don’t care to drink.

Wine connoisseurs take their hobby very seriously. As such, there are very specific rules of etiquette that you are expected to follow at a wine tasting.

Don’t Drink the Wine

When you attend a formal tasting at a winery Humboldt County CA, the goal is to taste and evaluate many different vintages. If you become drunk on the first few sips, your mind is no longer as clear or your senses as sharp to gauge the quality of the ones that come later. Therefore, the expectation is that, rather than swallow each sip of wine, you spit it out. However, don’t spit just anywhere. There will be a receptacle provided for you to use. It may be a communal vessel that everyone at the table shares, or you may receive one for your individual use.

Don’t Wear Perfume

One of the steps in tasting and evaluating the wine is to sniff it. Fine wines contain notes of other ingredients, such as flowers or other fruits, and all the various notes together form an olfactory profile called a bouquet. If you wear perfume, it can interfere with your ability to detect the bouquet. Depending on the size of the perfume’s sillage, which is the area that the fragrance extends outward from your body, it can also affect the ability of other people to detect notes from the wine.

Most of what people perceive as taste is actually smell. Therefore, the “sniffing” step is actually one of the most important parts of the wine tasting.