Because wine is more than a beverage

Most of my friends know less than Jon Snow about wine, so swirling the glass, sniffing the wine and looking at it, makes we look like expert. And I am not one. But still, everybody ask me advices about wine. Well, everybody excepts who really knows wine.

Luckily I don’t go around the social gatherings where people really knows what we are talking about, the ones where sommeliers and wine experts abound, and where I would relentlessly flushed out as an incompetent. But if you want to know the basics of swirling, to stand apart from the usual goofball, here there are the 7 steps you need to know to show off your “winyness”:

Understudy your role

Firstly, start asking your self why you should swirl the wine glass: knowing what you are doing it’s always a good start. And there can always be somebody asking you – genuinely or maliciously – the meaning of that gesture. In that case, tell them swirling helps to aerate the wine and to support the rise of the aromas and bouquets to the nose, using the volatility of alcohol.

How to do it right

Never emphasize the gesture taking the glumly attitude of an expert. And NEVER and EVER exaggerate the movement using the shoulder and the elbow. Just give two or three twitches using your wrist. The best would be doing it without interrupting your conversation. You would look like an experienced wine taster!

Wait, not yet! Don’t be impatient 

First, you have to smell the wine when it’s still. After swirling the wine, you will notice different aromas.

At a certain point, stop

Aerating a closed wine will greatly improve its taste, but you should stop at a certain point. But even if you swirl it for hours, an awful wine will still be terrible.

I said stop! 

Careful, if you keep swirling that glass, your friends will start questioning the quality of that wine, and they can even be annoyed after all that spinning.

Enough, I said!

Who is talking to you, what they should think? That you are more interested in the glass than in their conversation?

NEVER with a sparkling wine!

I should not even say this: swirling a sparkling wine is a murder! It removes the carbonation and causes the wine to go flat.

Bonus: how to recover from a desperate situation

In social gathering there is an awful unwritten rule that you stand up at the expense of someone else. Everybody waits for an unfortunate person to make a faux pas, to jeer him or her with malicious jokes, and go up in the social consideration for a little while. So, never lower your guard because there will probably someone nearby ready to take advantage of your mistakes. But this evening you can’t really stay focused because you have something on your mind. And you keep swirling the glass two or three times more than needed, a petty vulture will pitilessly say: “My friend, after all that swirling, have you been able to quantify the centrifugal force of that wine or you need a couple of rotations more?” In that moment stay calm and turn the situation around: “I am sorry my dear. I was trying to remove this bothersome scent of stables but probably I was wrong. It is not the wine but your breath”.

And that’s how you finish a social vulture.