Swirl, sip, savour: Tips for hosting a memorable wine tasting
Instead of yet another movie or game night, hosting a wine tasting is a great way to change things up a bit. If you aren't a trained sommelier, one easy way to do it is to ask each guest to bring a bottle and introduce the wine.
"Every home wine tasting should have a theme," says Ernst Büscher, spokesman for the German Wine Institute (DWI), who has a few tips on how to make the event special.
Which wine should I choose for a wine tasting evening at home?
Ernst Büscher: I suggest systematically selecting a grape variety for the chosen theme and perhaps even limiting it to one growing region.
Tastings of different vintages are also popular. Focus on a grape variety from one vinter who sells wines from different vineyards. That allows the wines to reveal their ageing potential as well as the climatic influences in the individual vintages. Always start with the youngest wine when tasting different vintages.
Once you have decided on a theme, buy the wine or ask people to bring a bottle along. To make things more interesting, taste the wine first before revealing all your knowledge.
Blind tastings are also popular. Wrap the bottles in aluminium foil, number them, hand everyone a glass and let the deliberating begin!
How many wines do you need and which one do you start with?
Büscher: A good guideline is a selection of six to eight wines. If the sample is larger, inexperienced tasters may not be able to distinguish them.
When selecting white wines, start with dry wines and then move onto something sweeter, from a reserve wine to ice wine. Don't serve ice wine first as that would make the fruit acidity of any dry wine you taste afterwards seem much more pronounced than it actually is.
If you have selected only dry wines, work your way from light to heavy. The alcohol by volume (ABV) metric on the label reveals the wine's alcohol content. If a wine has an ABV of 11.5%, taste it before sipping the bottle with an ABV of 13%.
If you have selected a mix of wines, start with white wine. If you are tasting only red wines, try the fruity wines before transitioning to high-tannin or complex wines that have been stored in barrique barrels.
How do you properly compare wines?
Büscher: The wines should be at the same temperature and tasted from identical glasses to savour subtle differences. Light and young white wines are ideally chilled between 9 and 11 degrees Celsius, while red wines should have a temperature of between 16 and 18 degrees.
Red wine warms up quite quickly at the table, so pour it when it is a little cooler.
To get rid of any lingering odours, rinse the glasses briefly with water before tasting. Eat a piece of bread or baguette and drink plenty of water to cleanse your palate in between tastings.
Before tasting the wine, swirl the glass to increase the wine's surface area, to allow for more flavour particles to be released - that helps to intensify the smell and taste.
Sniff the wine several times before tasting. Many elements of the flavour will be lost if you do not smell it intensely beforehand.
When it comes to wine, the tongue distinguishes only between sweet, salty, sour and bitter flavours. The nose, on the other hand, can gauge the true diversity of a wine, as it can pick up on more subtle notes.
