Hi, I’m Anne Kjellgren. Thanks for joining me for our next segment on Mindful January, a series that promotes a gentle, inspiring way to start the new year with intentionality and appreciation for the artistry of wine.

 

So today we’re going to talk about the five S’s of tasting. If you go to the links in the notes, I do have a longer video that goes through step by step in a much more detailed way. But for the purposes of this video, I’m just going to do a quick review of the five steps:

 

And I introduce this at the beginning of all of my wine classes because it’s important, I think, for people to understand how to really take in all of the aromas, the flavors, the mouthfeel, the taste sensation, all of the things that are involved in tasting wine. So we’re going to do kind of a mini session on that here today. We want to focus on being truly present with each step.

 

So I’m going to highlight how each sense contributes to the overall wine experience.

 

First is sight.

 

So you’re going to, when you’ve got your wine in your glass, you’re going to look at your wine and you’re going to hold your glass at a 45 degree angle. And the best thing is if you have a white piece of paper, maybe a white napkin, or if you’re perhaps in a restaurant, the back of a menu. If you’ve got your white piece of paper and you’ve got your glass at a 45 degree angle, you get a really good sense for the color, the clarity. Are there any bubbles in the wine? Are the legs or the liquid sticking to the sides of the glass. Once you’ve turned your wine glass 45 degrees and then turn it straight back up, the wine that’s running down the wine glass, is it running quickly or is it running slowly? Those are the legs.

 

Second step is to sniff. And this is where I tell people, do not swirl your wine glass yet. You want to sniff. You want to see what the native wine, what the natural wine offers in terms of aromas.

 

So I will start with the wine glass, the top of the wine glass at my collarbone. If I can smell the wine from there, it’s definitely a powerful aromatic wine. If I can smell it from my chin, it’s somewhere in the middle, probably somewhat of an aromatic wine. But if it takes all the way to underneath my nose, that is not gonna be an aromatic wine. So now that we’ve assessed it without swirling, step number three is to go ahead and swirl the wine.

 

Now, why do we swirl then? Well, because when you swirl the wine, the oxygen starts to evaporate and as it goes up through the glass, it lifts up the phenolics, which are those things that we smell and take in as aromatics. So that allows us to sense before we even taste what the wine is all about. And then step number four is to take a sip.

 

Now if you’ve not had any wine yet when you go to have this little tasting, do kind of throw away taste. Do a taste, kind of bathe the inside of your mouth with the wine. Get rid of any other remnants of anything else that you ate or drank earlier in the day or maybe the day before. Just toothpaste, whatever. Go ahead and take that first sip. Okay, so once you kind of coated your mouth with the wine, then go ahead and take a second sip. That is when you’re going to want to really look at the five characteristics of wine. And if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about there, I’ve already done a segment on that, and so I will have a link for that in the show notes as well. But be very mindful, take a moment, breathe. Don’t rush through the sip and the savor part. And savor, by the way, is step number five.

 

So you take your sip and then savor is when you determine the body of the wine. Do the flavors linger? Does it last for a while? Or is it just quick and refreshing and then dissipates and goes away? Those are the kinds of things that you want to notice with the 5Ss. So when you drink your wine, I really urge you not to just, you know, throw it back, but to really savor it. And maybe you only go through the first five steps really slowly the first time. If you’re with friends or if you’re having a meal, but you do want to really recognize and enjoy that so that as you do take subsequent sips of your wine throughout your meal, throughout your conversation, your brain knows that those things are there. So they’re going to be looking for that.

 

It’s going to elevate your experience with each and every sip all the way through. If you are on your own, if you’re enjoying a glass of wine with a good book, or you’re just kind of relaxing at the end of your day, then maybe you do that two or three times to just enjoy it maybe at the beginning of the glass midway through and then more toward the end, just to kind of re-experience it and see if there’s anything new that you taste or anything new that you experience that you didn’t the first time through. That’s also a common thing.

I would also maybe urge you to jot down a few notes because that will help you remember it, even if you only remember it for that sitting.but it will kind of register that into your consciousness of that’s what you’re experiencing. And that’s actually gonna be useful to you as you go through your wine journey and continue to learn more. I hope you’ll join the conversation by sharing your mindful wine moments and personal takeaways on social media. You can use the designated hashtag mindful with wine on our food, wine and flavor Facebook page. Links are down in the show notes.

 

Thank you so much for joining me for Mindful January, a series that’s meant to promote a gentle, inspiring way to start the new year with intentionality and appreciation for the artistry of wine. Please like, follow, and share. Cheers!