Where were we?
Ah, yes. Learning to taste. Classes and books are essential, but nothing beats drinking wine! Correct? No, not entirely. There is more to tasting than simply pouring wine down your throat. We will cover a lot of information on tasting as this blog matures with age, but for now the simplest approach to tasting is to use the 5 s’es. And they are?

Stem
Sight
Sniff
Slurp – there has got to be a better word for it!
And Swallow.

And where did you learn this? Funny that you should ask. It was revealed to me on a slow boat going up a river. No, that’s not entirely correct I’ve known about the 5s’es for some time, I’ve just never thought of them as the 5 s’es. That’s not very clear is it? ……….Moving on. The 5s’es were used to demonstrate wine tasting while we were on a recent river/vineyard tour of the Swan Valley in Western Australia. It seemed to be a very simple approach to something that I can make extremely complicated; which will be made evident in the following days, weeks and months.

In the next posts we will go through all five, in detail! So come prepared with your nose and mouth, a glass and an open bottle of wine.