How to Make Love to Your Wine

or,

Diagram 1

Recently, I was sitting in a wine bar in Chicago, and I couldn’t help but notice—and I beg your indulgence to this brief, but rather obscene, elitism—how quickly people raced through their glasses of wine. I mean, there’s a time and place for a quickie, but a $10 glass of juice certainly is not that occasion.

So it occurred to me—and again this is that deplorable elitist speaking through me— that many people probably just don’t know what they should be doing, where they should be doing it, and with whom they should be doing it with.

I’ll settle the score for at least one of these conundrums.

Many of us learn the science of wine much like we first experienced science in the back of a ’93 Ford Taurus: Get in, get out, before people get suspicious. But good wine is not merely a drink, a scientific explanation for how you score a buzz, but an art that demands your devotion before it surrenders its enigmas.

So get a glass and your favorite bottle of wine, and follow along, my wino lovers.

Note: No produce will be harmed during this lesson.

1. Position One: Vigorous Oxygenation

Oxygen does a few different things. One, it reacts with the wine, changing it’s structure, ensuring that no sip will be the same as the next. And two, it serves as a conduit for our surprisingly powerful olfactory system, to which we owe 90% of what we taste in wine.

Diagram 2

Human olfaction should be as commonly understood as the reasons for Michael J. Jackson’s death, but if it isn’t, you can’t blame our education system because Blood on the Dance Floor was one hell of a video.

So I’ll just assume you know little.

Hold the glass firmly in your hand and swirl it vigorously, this forces oxygen to penetrate the wine’s suppple surface, releasing and concentrating aromas inside the wine glass where they wait to be released on your command.

Place your nose inside the glass, breathe in slowly and deeply. Your brain will begin to rolodex between the thousands of scent memories it contains. Go with it.

2. Position Two: Retronasal Olfactory Stimulus

Diagram 3

This sounds like it hurts. But I promise, if you take it slowly, and with practice, it can be quite rewarding.

Take a sip of wine. Begin performing slow oral movements so that the wine permeates your mouth completely. The next step gets a little tricky. Purse your lips together and suck in air, as if you were using a straw.

Be careful, you can easily choke, and that just ruins the mood.

What you are doing is using the backdoor to let flavor punch you in the face. Most of what you perceive as “taste” is actually aroma carried back through the retronasal passageway (which can be seen in a different application here) and processed by your olfactory receptors.

3. Positon Three: Olfacto-Gustatory Elation

A wise man once told me, “Never spit, you’ll get bitch-slapped by Bacchus.” Plus, you’re just wasting a lot of hard work. Both yours and the winemaker’s. If you take these steps and use, reuse, and use them some more you’ll soon find you’re making love to your wine like a stud. And this makes for a lot of happy people.

So I ask you winos, what’s your favorite region in the world to make love to?

(Uh…that is in reference to wine.)

This post is part of a #BlogOff between myself and @AmuseeWine you can read her post at the Crush Pad. Give me a vote, leave a comment below and retweet!