Food and Wine World

If you have enjoyed drinking wine for years but feel that you’re knowledge lets you down, now is a great time to educate yourself in wines.  There is so much to the production of wine and also the tasting it can seem a little bit intimidating.  There is so much wine verbiage it’s easy to think that learning now is nearly impossible.  Don’t worry, lots of people feel like you.  They get invited to wine tasting parties, everybody else is milling around and chatting about the wine, yet you feel as if you’re the only person in the room who is uneducated about it.  If this is the case you can easily improve your knowledge by joining a wine tasting class, it’s also a lot of fun.

What Will Be Taught at a Wine Tasting Class?

If you have decided you want to know more about wine there are many places you can do this.  There are internet sites offering a wealth of info, there’s online wine education courses and of course books.  Literally hundreds of books have been written on the subject of wine, some are general books designed for novices whilst other books are written on one particular aspect of wine such as French wines or wine production.  If you feel you need to learn in a more personal manner, you could enrol in a wine tasting class.

Attending a wine tasting class will allow you to uncover lots of interesting facts you probably never knew existed.  Information such as grape varieties, regions, soil and weather plus how these factors affect the taste of the wine.  There are a number of different types of courses and how much you learn can depend on who is teaching and the length of the course.  It’s advisable to find out what you will be learning before you sign up as you wouldn’t want to be disappointed.  However here is a guide to what you might learn on your particular course.

1. Most people tend to buy just white, red and champagne glasses.  However there are actually many styles and sizes of glasses which have been designed to be drunk with particular types of wine.  You should be taught what types of glasses are available and how to choose them
2. You will often hear people talk about the bouquet of the wine.  The will stick their nose in and declare what the bouquet is like.  No, of course they aren’t talking about flowers, they are referring to the smell of the wine as each type will release aromas which are very different to each other.
3. So that you can truly understand and enjoy the wine you are tasting it’s a good idea to take notes about the color, smell and taste of the wine.
4. You should also be taught the different between young and old wines and it makes for a great party trick to be able to distinguish the difference without seeing the wine bottle label.  You’ll also be explained what turbulence in the wine means and what it means when a wine is almost transparent.
5. Because red, white and rose wines all taste different you should learn how to taste each of them as they shouldn’t be judged equally.
6. When attending any wine events you’ll notice the first thing a wine buff does when a glass has been poured is to swirl the glass.  This is an art which you will be taught otherwise you may find yourself spilling will all over a beautiful white linen table cloth.

Of course there is a huge amount of info to learn about wine; you don’t have to learn every single shred of info but attending a wine tasting class will give you a really good intro to what wine is all about and what you need to know to prove that you aren’t a novice at wine tasting parties.