
How to observe wine
The tasting ritual with Dacastello Vini Pregiati
1. Sight
The first phase in wine tasting, visual examination, tells us several things about the wine we are going to taste.
And if, as Marcus Aurelius said, “everything we hear is an opinion, not reality, and everything we see is a perspective, not the truth”, sight is undoubtedly man’s most highly developed sense.
The wine-tasting ritual begins with the observation of the wine which flows from the bottle, fluid and vibrant, into the glass, filling it up to a third of its volume.
We then take the glass, holding the stem between our forefinger and thumb, raise it to eye level and observe it against the light to appreciate the wine’s clarity.
To capture the nuances of the colour and its highlights, we tilt the glass against a white background. The linen tablecloth of a restaurant set among the vineyards would be ideal, but your kitchen wall will do just as well.
Now, slowly swirl the wine in the glass to observe the legs that form on the crystal. Tasting the wine, a Pinot Grigio delle Venezie D.O.C. Dacastello for example, in Bormioli crystal glasses would, again, be ideal, but whatever kind of wine glass you have at home will do fine.
The light reflecting on the wine highlights the clarity, transparency and vibrancy of the colour.
Now let’s move on to the facts. Pinot Grigio delle Venezie D.O.C. Dacastello is a good example.
Made from a noble international grape variety, Pinot Grigio is an interesting, crisp white wine.
Its name comes from the French, pin, meaning pine, relating to the bunches of Pinot grapes, which resemble pine cones in shape.
Pinot Grigio delle Venezie D.O.C. Dacastello is a clear and brilliant straw yellow colour with faint greenish highlights.
In this case, visual examination paves the way for the subsequent tasting phases, which reveal the light aroma of broom with a fresh, herbaceous undertone and, last but not least, a fresh, a fresh body characterised by a subtle acidity.
“What one sees depends on how one sees. This is because all observation is not only a receiving, a discovery, but also a creation”. Søren Kierkegaard