The Art of Wine Tasting

Do you simply drink wine, or do you taste wine? Anyone can drink wine, but it takes practice to be able to recognize and distinguish a wine's characteristics.

Learn about tasting techniques and terms, how smell and taste are integral to the enjoyment of wine, the proper way to serve wine and what types of wine glasses are appropriate for certain wines, where you can go to participate in a wine tasting and how to act when you are there. We have also included links to other sites on the Internet that have to do with wine tasting and enjoyment.

Wine Tasting Venues

Tasting venues range from the casual, private wine tasting party with friends to the day trip to a local vineyard to formal wine tasting dinners.

Wine Tasting Parties

In addition to ensuring that you have enough wine, glasses, water and other necessities, it is important to consider the environment. Guests should be comfortable, this means enough seating, and not be bothered by annoying odours or insects. Avoid using incense or strong deodorizers, or even citronella candles, during or prior to a wine tasting.

Wine tastings can either be done blind or with full knowledge. In a blind wine tasting each of the wines is concealed in a bag and identified only by a number until the end of the tasting. This tends to result in less bias . . . and it's also fun to see if you can guess the wine.

Wine Club

If you are just starting to learn about wine and are interested in tasting a variety of wines, joining a wine club may be worth trying. With the recent changes in American law, wine vendors may now offer their wares over the internet.Most online wine clubs are reasonably inexpensive and a great way to explore the growing range of wines on the market. This is definitely a good route if you'd like to taste a variety of wines inexpensively.