Santa Barbara Wine Tasting

Sommelier Olivier Magny, founder of O Chateau, says that you taste wine with all of your senses, as he demonstrates with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. The first step is to look at the wine. Hold the wine glass by the stem to avoid heating up the wine with your hand and marking up the glass with fingerprints because you want to be able to check the clarity of the wine (white wine should be clear) and look to see if it is a reflective wine. Does light play off the surface of the wine and make it look shiny? The more reflective the wine is the more acidic it is, so if your wine appears to be shiny, you should expect it to taste acidic and be crisp and fresh on your palate. Then swirl your glass to bring out the bouquet of the wine and open up its flavor. As you swirl, you can see how much body the wine has as it drips down the inside of the glass. He also demonstrates how to taste red wine and examine the meniscus, or the rim of the wine in a glass which is lighter colored in an aged wine than in a young one due to the effects of oxidation.

Speaking of tasting wine, if you’re interested in going on a wine tasting in the Santa Barbara Wine Country, click on the Santa Barbara Wine Tasting link to visit our home page.