Looking at Wine
The next step in your examination
is visual. Fill the glass about one-third
full, never more than half-full. Pick it up
by the stem. This may feel awkward at first,
or affected, but there are good reasons: Holding
the glass by its bowl hides the liquid from
view; fingerprints blur its color; the heat
of your hand alters the wine's temperature.
Offer someone a wine glass and
you can tell immediately by the way they hold
it whether or not they are connoisseurs.
Focus in turn on hue, intensity
and clarity. Each requires a different way
of looking. The true color, or hue, of the
wine is best judged by tilting the glass and
looking at the wine through the rim, to see
the variation from the deepest part of the
liquid to its edges.
Intensity can best be gauged
looking straight down through the wine from
above. Clarity--whether the wine is brilliant,
or cloudy with particles--is most evident
when light is shining sideways through the
glass. Each of these elements reveals different
aspects of a wine's character and quality;
I'll detail these later.
But don't forget simply to enjoy
the wine's color. No other liquid is as vivid
and variegated, or reflects light with such
joy and finesse. There's good reason wine's
appearance is often compared to ruby and garnet,
topaz and gold.
Next comes the swirling. This
too can feel unnatural, even dangerous if
your glass is too full and your clothing brand-new.
But besides stirring up the full range of
colors, it prepares the wine for the next
step, the olfactory examination.
The easiest way to swirl is
to rest the base of the glass on a table,
hold the stem between thumb and forefinger,
and gently rotate the wrist. Right-handers
will find a counter-clockwise motion easiest,
left-handers the reverse. Move the glass until
the wine is dancing, climbing nearly to the
rim. Then stop. As the liquid settles back
into the bottom of the glass, a transparent
film will appear on the inside of the bowl,
falling slowly and irregularly down the sides
in the wine's "tears" or "legs."
"Experts" derive meanings from them
as various and profound as fortune-tellers
do from looking at tea leaves, but in truth
they're simply an indication of the amount
of alcohol in the wine: the more alcohol,
the more tears. Remember that when you're
considering whether to open another bottle.
