The “Five S’s” of wine tasting
Monday, January 15th, 2007‘Fess up, folks: you watch NBC’s In Wine Country with Mary Babbitt on Sunday nights, don’t you?
OK, much like many of you, I find my weekend time to be precious; therefore I don’t always watch the show. And, being that the show only airs in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia, and Hartford, CT, chances are that you’ve never even heard of the show. But if you had, you may have been aware that In Wine Country has been honored with a James Beard Award for Best Local Food Show.*
One of the regular segments of the show is an audience teaser, often a question that serves to further viewers’ wine knowledge. In last night’s show, Mary mixed it up a little from the typical multiple-choice format, this time asking, “Do you know what the Five S’s of Wine Tasting are?
As the show broke to commercial, I mentally jotted down “Swirl, Sniff, Sip, Savor, and Swallow.”
And I was wrong! Well, at least partially wrong, in that I had four of them correct. According to Ms. Babbitt and the In Wine Country folks, the Five S’s are “See, Swirl, Smell, Sip, and Savor.”
She’s right, of course. One must also see the wine to get a sense of it’s clarity, liveliness of color, even its potential age. Swallowing, on the other hand, is not included in the Five S’s for a very good reason: to swallow every wine one tastes cannot necessarily be regarded as good policy. Indeed, a sixth “S” might be “spit” - a practice which I’ve always maintained is a perfectly acceptable thing to do when tasting wines, no matter how many or how few.
While the spit bucket always remains empty at the mid-week tastings I host, I admit that tasting only six bottles’ worth between six people, in addition to the Joy Factor, can often preclude spitting. But being on a weeknight, it’s also rare that any one bottle at my tastings goes empty; most folks want a clear head for the following day’s work efforts. So though we swallow, we just don’t swallow very much. (I expect to regret this statement, however.)
Nevertheless, if you’re going to drive a car and/or going to attend a massive tasting such as the ZAP Festival in San Francisco later this month like I’ll be doing, then spitting the wine after noting each of the other five S’s is the proper thing to do. That, and eating a lot of food - something there’s always plenty of at the popular ZAP tastings.
Being that I’ll be spitting lots of Zinfandel on the 27th, being that others will too, and in the absence of protective plastic sheeting a la Gallagher’s Sledge-O-Matic, I’ll be wearing my best purple shirt. And I’ll swallow after I arrive safely home.
*Please see It feels like Spring for this Winehiker for a follow-up to this post.
