How to taste Wine Without Wank

Next time you are trying to check out that latest hot pick from winewithoutwank.com.au, ask yourself these questions:

• Look around

  is there enough light and a neutral, white background to properly see the colour and density?

• Smell the air

  are there any odours in the air that will affect your assessment of the wine's smell? (Smoke, cooking smells, salt air, etc will all affect how you assess the wine.)

BUT if you are just enjoying a wine, not assessing the bejeezus out of the wine, then ferrrrgett about it!

The glass you drink your wine from makes a huge impact on the wine itself.

Try a little experiment: drink a glass of your favourite wine from any simple wine glass and then follow it up with a glass in a coffee mug. It will be worlds apart.

But, in all seriousness, too much can be made about the wine glass. Simple, classic red wine and white wine glass shapes will do the job. A general rule is to try and make sure the lip on the glass is not too thick, which a lot of mass produced glassware will most certainly possess!!

The old standard wine tasting tulip glass will do very nicely.

Glassware is very personal: one man's $8 wine glass is another's $500 Riedel!

Decanters are a very necessary item for anyone who will be cellaring wine. Even after a short length of time in the bottle, certain bottles of wine will "close up" and need to be decanted to bring a little more "life" to the wine. Think of sniffing a beautiful, blooming rose instead of sniffing a wall!! It also allows you to pour a wine off any sediment in the bottle. Sure, the sediment is harmless and pretty much tasteless, but who wants grit in their wine?

As for the type of decanter, again, so long as it allows you to pour easily and is balanced, any decanter will do the job. Whether it is pleasing to the eye and easy to use is yet another matter of personal opinion.

Wine is a full sensory experience. Of course, a lot of emphasis is placed on the taste, and to a lesser extent, the smell. What a wine looks like is often ignored by all but professional tasters, judges and wine wankers. But, it doesn't have to be that way!

Does it look heavy in the glass when you swirl it? (To judge this, think about what water looks like in a glass, then think about oil, and lastly jelly. Where in the scheme of things does your wine fit?)

Does it have many "legs" on the side of the glass after swirling, or are they thick and lasting? (The "legs" are the drips that form down the inside of your glass after you swirl your wine. Thick, long lasting driblets are normally a sign of either high alcohol or high sweetness.)

If sparkling, how deep is the "mousse" formed in the top of the glass by the bubbles? How quickly does it dissipate? And importantly, how small is each individual bubble, or "bead"?

All of this is before you even try and describe the colour!

Speaking of colour, it may seem strange to say it, but to me, it is one of the hardest factors in describing a wine. How many colours do you intimately know in your head? In a strange way, the exact colour is not too important to me, but whether it is deep, brilliant, bright, glowing etc are probably more important, as they are the characteristics that make the look of a wine memorable.

Hold your glass by the stem and give the wine five or six circular swirls. (You know you have seen this move plenty of times - practice it, cos it makes a big difference!) Hold the glass extended out from you and slowly bring it up towards your nose and note the point where you start to smell the wine. Could you smell it at arm's length, or did it have to be practically half way up your nose before it hits you?

You have just given yourself an indication of the intensity of the wine's "bouquet" or "aroma". I prefer "smell"!

Start to break down what it is you are smelling. Is it earth? Flowers? Vegetation? Spice? Fruit? Metal? Some or all of the above? If you can, then break it down further. What type of fruit? Is it earthy in a dry dusty way or a wet, moist-algae producing way?

But most importantly: does it smell any bloody good?

Time to put the wine in your mouth, by taking a good half mouthful. Yep, don't scull the whole thing, otherwise you won't be able to taste it very well! Hold the wine in your mouth and let it swill around, coating your tongue, the roof of your mouth, your teeth - basically everywhere!

While it is in there, think about how it feels in your mouth. Is it heavy or light? Does it feel oily and coating, or watery?

Don't swallow yet!

Here is the payoff. Don't let wine wankers fool you with all that talk about sighting wines and nosing them. We all want that sucker in our mouth and down the gullet!

While all wine wankers seem to be synonymous with flowery verbal diarrhea about flavours, start with the basics. Does the wine taste sweet or dry, sour or bitter? Draw a little air over the wine by sucking some air through your lips. (Careful not to let any drip down your chin, which tends to make you look like a drunken dickhead.) Let the wine drip down your throat. Is it warm, maybe even hot as it slides down? That could mean it is high in alcohol.

How long does the flavour last in your mouth? This is what is known as the wine's length. If a wine tastes good, then you really want it to last as long as you can!

Is there an oily/powdery/dusty sensation on your teeth and tongue? Think of a strong cup of tea, and that "woody" coating your mouth can get. That would be tannin, my friend! Is there a lot of it? Is it smooth and silky or rough?

And now, have a go at defining the flavour itself. Again, think of breaking the flavour components down into top level categories as we did with Smell.

Finally, if the wine's flavour hangs around in your mouth for long enough, and tastes good, then you know you have something you can relate too!

Spitting is a huge part of wine wanker culture. Professional tasters obviously cannot consume every wine they assess, or they would lose their sensory perception pretty quickly, as well as their lunch. So, they carry out the above steps but purse their lips and spout the wine into a spittoon.

There is quite an art to it. Many world-renowned spitters can hit a spittoon from 50 paces in one powerful, thin stream. The trick is to use enough force that no dribbles cascade down your chin, and not so much that the spit rebounds back out of the bucket and back at you!

So, why should you spit? The biggest reason is so you can still taste wine if you need to drive. Of course, this is a common requirement if you are driving through a wine region visiting cellar doors. A word of warning though - don't expect to remain completely unaffected when spitting - alcohol will still get into your system when you are spitting, just not as much as if you swallow the stuff.