Wines intrigue me. I have often wondered how my guests could sniff and tell a good wine from a mediocre one. In pursuit of this knowledge I attended several wine tasting sessions where all I heard were eloquent descriptions of the wine and its pedigree. Rightfully so! After all who would conduct a wine tasting session? Obviously someone who wanted to sell it and so the eloquence was a given for the evening anyway. No one would uncork a bad wine!
I met Franco in Bengaluru when he had come on a holiday to accompany his daughter who was working with an NGO. In order to utilise his time better he taught us Italian. That his English was scratchy didn’t matter to him. But there was no doubting his spirit. When I got a chance to visit Italy, I was invited to come and stay with him and his family in a small town out side of Rome — Colle Ferro. For me it was a great chance to experience non-commercial Italian hospitality. I was a part of the family. Lunches and dinners were really interesting as Franco would get on with making the pasta and Pina — his lovely wife would put together the rest of the food. We would sit in their airy balcony, overlooking the lawn, with all the food beautifully spread out before us. It would invariably start with a salad and of course a bottle of wine! As the conversation got more and more animated, it would be time for the pasta and as Pina doled that out, Franco would be uncorking another! Then would come the roast with another bottle of wine! Followed by dessert, which would be followed by a little glass of wine or an espresso and a ‘grappino’. In all we would have a minimum of three glasses of wine over a meal!
OK, so now it was all falling into place, if you were to drink wine like water every single day, and three wines in a meal at that! — It made perfect sense that you could tell a good one just by sniffing.
It’s one thing to sit in wine tasting sessions, doing the visual, nasal and retro nasal evaluation, and quite the other to tell a good wine in a single whiff. The appreciation of wine has as much to do with learning the technique as with educating the palate, because the palate has a frail memory so it may not remember a wine that you tasted today after say about a month! In order to strengthen the sense there is one simple way. Practice!
It won’t be long before you can tell your Chardonnays from the Chenin Blancs and your Shiraz from the Cabernet Sauvignons.
A glass a day should keep you in the sway!

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Tasting wines
What wine to buy: If you are starting your wine sojourn — get help from a friend and buy a decent wine — it really does not matter if you start with a red or white. You’ll eventually figure out what you like.

The colour: Check the colour of the wine against a white background. Observe the colour and then gently tilt the glass to see the ‘nail’. Carefully observe the tint of the wine at the edge away from you.
Red wines age from purple to reddish brown and if the wine has an orange tint at the edge — it’s an aged wine.
Whites age from almost colourless to yellow and deep gold.
Nosing the wine: the technique of deeply inhaling the wine is called nosing. Often this can be your first clue of how a wine is. During nosing stay focused to see if the whiff of the wine reminds you of a familiar smell. Note that down. At this stage you can also identify if a wine is ‘off’ if there is a vinegary feel to it.

Swirling the wine: Swirling helps the wine to breathe and open up. If you smell the wine after swirling, it will tell you more about itself.
Swirl and stand the glass. Observe the ‘legs’ formed by the wine as it slowly flows down. The slower the flow the more viscous of ‘bodied’ the wine is.

Tasting: this is the fun part. Slurp the wine pulling in air along with the wine. Take a small sip at first, note down your impressions and then take a larger sip and note them again. This is the part where your flavour memories kick in. If the wine reminds you of a flavour, note it down. Carefully observe what the wine tastes like at the back of your palate with the mouth closed. It’s absolutely alright even if the wine does not remind you of anything. Write down your impressions.

Pay attention to the grape varietal: It’s good to familiarise one self with the grape varietal. Make notes on what the varietal tastes like. This will help you identify the grape in future tastings.

Don’t drink down the wine: If tasting more than two wines, don’t drink them down as that could lead to happy and coloured impressions of the third wine!

Reset your palate: Between subsequent tastings reset the palate by having a piece of bread for example. This will blot the tongue and aid in removing residual flavours so that you are fresh to taste the next wine.