Are you really tasting your wine? Like, REALLY?

I'm often asked for tips on the best way to experience a wine, including:

• What temperature should I enjoy my wine?
• Is swirling really a thing? And Why?
• What's the best way to actually taste the wine?

If you've ever wondered these things... You're going to want to listen in.

And if you want to dive deeper into the tips I touch on here, check out these previous episodes:

Aging Wine- Why and How?

The How's and Why's of Aerating your Wine

A FEW tips to elevate your wine Joy

Pairing Schmairing- Finding the best food and wine combinations

Try a delicious and highly limited wine from a California woman winemaker! Nikk’s 2021 Sollevato Sangiovese is available to be shipped to most US States. Use the code PODLISTENER for 10% off

You NEED some delicious California Olive Oil from our awesome sponsor American Olive Farmer. Use code SipWithNikki for $10 off your order!

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy me a glass of wine and get a shoutout on a future episode.

Please leave a RATING or a REVIEW (on your podcast listening platform), or thumbs up and subscribe (on YouTube!)

Questions? Comments? Guest requests? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

When you do this, and I've had

people do this in front of me for the first time, and they're like, Oh my God, I've drank this wine a million times.

I never drank it like that.

Well, hello.

Welcome to Sip with Nikki.

I'm your host, Nikki Lamberti coming to you from Sonoma County, California.

And before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to one of our regular listeners, Greg, I believe Greg is actually here in California.

Greg is now an angel of the podcast.

Thank you so much for your support and your donation through the link in the show notes.

You have now bought me a glass of wine, my friend cheers to you.

So you may have noticed in recent episodes, I have been really blessed to be connecting with some.

fascinating, exciting, inspiring, funny guests.

And I've been doing a lot of interviews, which I very much enjoy.

And the feedback that I've been getting from all of you is that you are too.

So don't fret.

Those interviews are continuing.

However.

I wanted to take a moment and get back to basics for a minute and give you a quick how to episode, especially if you're newer as a listener.

Welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

You may not have listened back to some of the original episodes when we kicked off this podcast.

I have an episode about how to shop for wine, how to aerate wine, the best way to taste wine, descriptors, how to describe the fruit, Earth, wood, all of that.

So there's a lot of great information in these episodes if you go back.

But I recently had a listener question

from Julie and Julie wanted some tips on, okay, what is the right way to actually taste wine?

You know, once I have it in my glass, what's the best way to experience it?

So this week I'm going to break it down for you, going through things like what's the right temperature.

is swirling a thing.

What the heck is choreography on my palette and why does it matter?

And I think all of this really aligns with something that I've been talking about, especially in the come over October recent episodes that we did, about just really slowing down and enjoying Wine.

You know, today I'm recording this, it's November 8th, and it's actually Wine in Moderation Day.

Did you even know that's a thing?

The day, not the practice.

Maybe you didn't know it was a practice either, right?

But if you have listened to any of my episodes, you know.

So, part of the reason I'm so passionate about wine, both making it and teaching others about it in person and through this podcast, is to really encourage people to stop and notice what is going on in the glass and what is going on in your mouth and how does it make you feel.

So, I thought this was perfectly aligned with Wine in Moderation Day, which by the way, the tagline of that campaign, the greatest wine, the one that you'll remember.

So, let me give you some tips on how to actually remember the wine that you tasted.

And I encourage you to open a bottle, pour yourself a glass, and actually follow along this time.

If you're like me, and you usually listen to your podcast in the car, don't do that in the car.

But when you get home, restart this, grab your favorite person, or you and your dog on the couch, and actually follow the steps that we're about to go through.

And then send me an email, nicki at sipwithnicki.

com.

Did you like it?

Did you notice something that you never noticed even from a wine that you've drank a million times?

So here we go with how to really taste wine.

So I was recently a guest on someone else's podcast, which is really fun and a nice turn of the tables.

Shout out to David and Julie Bullitt for their couples podcast.

But we were talking about wine and I had sent them some of my Solovato Sangiovese.

And as we were tasting it on screen together, Julie was asking me, what is the right way to taste wine?

And it was a great reminder.

And I feel like a lot of.

people don't really know the quick tips to just get the most out of what's in your glass, especially if it's something that you really want to taste, right?

If it's something that someone gave you and it's just not good and it's like the last bottle and you want to plug your nose and shoot it back, like don't do what I'm about to explain.

But if you really are tasting wine to taste.

the wine and get the most out of it and let it take you on a journey like it can do.

I wanted to give you some quick tips on how to do that.

Now I've done some previous episodes about, um, storing wine, temperature of wine, um, aeration, decanting, all of those things kind of have gone really deep, but today I'm going to pull them together.

I'm and just give you the quick how to.

So first and foremost, pay attention to the temperature of your wine.

Most people drink reds too warm, like room temperature, the room I'm in right now is probably right about 70 degrees.

That's too warm for red wine.

You want to shoot for about 65.

How do you do that?

If you don't have a fancy wine fridge that's storing it at 55 to 60 degrees.

Put your room temperature wine in the refrigerator for 15 minutes and it will drop it down to that more ideal temperature.

It's just more pleasing to taste red with a little bit of chill on it.

Otherwise, you notice some alcohol and maybe some of the the harsher things in wine can be magnified when it's too warm.

On the flip side, if it's a white, most people drink white too cold because we store it in the fridge and we take it out of the fridge when we're ready to drink it.

The ideal drinking temperature for white wine is about 55 degrees.

That is not refrigerator temperature.

Well, how do you get your white wine in that zone?

If it's kept in the refrigerator, take it out of the refrigerator for 15 minutes before you're going to drink it.

Let it warm up.

You'll smell more and you'll taste more when your white is not too cold.

When it's too cold, all the molecules that are in there giving you what you smell and taste, they're kind of paralyzed and sleeping from the colder temperature.

Let them warm up.

And they'll wake up in the glass.

Swirling.

Is swirling really a thing?

Yes, it really is a thing.

And I don't care if you're drinking out of a stemless wine glass, which is what we drink out of 90 percent of the time in our house for every day, or a beautiful stem or grandma's crystal trellis at the holidays.

Why do we swirl our wine?

Because if you get oxygen in there, It wakes it up to use that term again.

The wine has been put in that bottle sometimes a year or two or five or 20 years prior to that moment when you're enjoying it.

So swirling gets oxygen in there.

Wine is volatile as far as all of its chemical components and you will smell more and taste more when you swirl it first.

You can even do what my friend Hobie Wedler of episode 13 loves to teach people to do while you're swirling it.

Take your other hand and put it over the top and sort of concentrate those aroma molecules in there and then lift it to your nose and pull your hand off, almost like a magic trick.

And it just really concentrates the smell.

And then after you smell it, just kind of notice what you notice, right?

The reason we smell is to kind of get a preview.

Am I smelling fruity things?

Am I smelling spicy things?

Does it smell sweet?

Does it smell tart?

Does it smell like a memory that's It's being pulled out of the back of my brain, like, gosh, these are like the little lavender flowers that grew in my grandparents backyard in Cape Cod, right?

Don't skip this part because you've heard this before, but so much of what we taste actually comes from olfactory and what we smell.

And I've talked about this.

Memories.

are really tied to olfactory.

So when we smell things, they very often trigger a memory and hopefully it's a good one.

So take some time to smell that wine, but also in just a literal sense, just use it to kind of gather some information about, okay, what do I think is about to hit my lips?

Then when you take a sip, it should not be down the hatch like it's Coke or Coors Light.

Hold that wine in your mouth for no.

Less than five seconds.

Move it around.

Not quite as vigorous as Listerine, but let it touch every part of your mouth.

I call it making out with the wine.

Let it touch the sides, the top, the bottom.

Then swallow it and then open your mouth a little and let some air in.

By the way, when I was explaining this part, you know, the make out with your wine part to Julie, she loved that part because Julie is actually a couple's therapist and Tries to help couples, you know connect better.

She appreciated that part.

When you do this And I've like had people do this in front of me for the first time and they're like, oh my god I've drank this wine a million times.

I never drank it like that.

Yeah.

Well, guess what?

You're cheating yourself of so much of what a winemaker Thinks about when they're crafting a wine is not just the flavors in there but something that we call mouth feel.

And that can be as specific as, where does this wine land or hit?

Do you feel it in your gums, in your cheeks, on your teeth, on the top and the bottom of the sides, right?

Different types of grapes are going to land differently in your mouth.

We all have different mouths and different pH.

So moving it around is going to let it grab on to different areas and let it do that choreography that wine can do.

Wine can actually be a story in a sip.

There can be a beginning, a middle.

and an end to that sip experience.

But if you just shoot it down your throat, like it's tequila, you're missing that, right?

So if we're really tasting to taste, take your time, let it touch every part of your mouth, make out with a little, then open your mouth, and then actually stop and think.

and pay attention.

What do you notice?

Does it taste like it smelled?

A lot of times wine does and you're like, yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I was expecting.

Cool.

Sometimes what you smelled and then what you taste are very different and you're like, whoa, that's not what I was expecting.

And you know what?

That's cool, too.

That's part of the excitement of wine.

It can sometimes stop you in your tracks where you're like, Oh, gosh, that's like, really surprised me.

But if you're not taking the steps to do that, you are missing a lot of the enjoyment that's packed into there.

When you do move wine around in your mouth, especially if it's a dry, not sweet, Red wine, especially something like Cabernet Sauvignon, there's tannin in there, right?

And tannin can start to feel chalky, dry, astringent, a little bit chewy.

If a wine is really tannic, you can start to feel like it's shrink wrapping on your palate.

So, when you taste a wine in this way that I'm telling you to do, you may notice that more and you may not like that.

Well, how do you neutralize that perception of tannin?

Cheese, steak, things that are salty and fatty and things that have protein, like there's a reason and I've talked about this in my food shmaring episode.

There's a reason why, you know, steak and Cabernet Sauvignon is the quintessential pairing if you are a carnivore that drinks wine as well.

But there's other ways to achieve that with salt and tannin.

It could be popcorn, right?

Buttered popcorn.

Salty and fatty.

That's why I love it so much.

Mmm.

And then finally, after you take that first sip and you really pay attention and you notice it and hopefully you like it, if you don't find something else, life's too short to drink bad wine.

Life's too short to drink anything that's not making you smile.

But then as you are enjoying the rest of that glass or bottle, depending on the day, notice sip one, sip two, sip three.

sip five, sip 15.

That wine will be changing, especially if it's a well made, high quality wine.

There are things that we do in the winemaking process that just help wine to develop layers that will then unveil themselves when they're in your glass.

or decanter or in your mouth.

I mentioned decanter.

If you have questions about aerating wine and decanting wine and why and how and how long, go back to one of the first episodes that I did.

It's all about that topic.

So hopefully this just makes you slow down, stop, think, pay attention, and then also figure out what you like about a wine or what you don't like about a wine.

And then you can use that to guide your selections moving forward.

So there's your play by play.

And I promise you, if you go through this fun and delicious exercise, you will have those little light bulbs going off.

And maybe you'll have that moment where you're like, wow, I get it.

I get why people like Nikki devote their entire life to this.

to wine and talking about it and tasting it and chasing it.

And, Oh, I understand why I might want to spend 50 or a hundred dollars on a bottle of wine, something that's going to take me on a journey, right?

Dig deeper, my friends, because man, when you have that experience and you pay attention, it is a whole nother world.

If you are looking for a gorgeous wine to do this activity with, especially holidays coming up and you want to share this with friends and family, I would love for you to taste my Sollevato Sangiovese.

My 2021 vintage is not quite sold out yet, though.

And it is the beautiful medium bodied red wine.

And because you're a listener, I'm giving you a discount code pod listener for 10 percent off.

Just visit Solovato wines.

com.

I'll put the link in the show notes.

I'm adding a new tagline this week just for this episode.

You know we normally end by saying, sip well, but this week I'm saying, slow down, make out with your wine, and sip well.