Slurpen mode d'emploi

With a circling motion of the wrist make the wine rotate in the glass. Keep rotating until the wine makes nice steady strokes through the glass. Because of the centrifugal forces the taste and sent molecules connect with oxygen and the aroma is released, so that we can better sniff the wine.
Take a sip. No don’t swallow, keep it in your mouth
Purse your lips and carefully suck in air though the wine. This way the air is assimilated with the oxygen and the aroma molecules explode in your mouth like little taste bombs. Sent and taste are released and je taste the wine like you’ve never tasted it before.
Let the sip flow through your mouth to chase the taste nuances around the taste buds as often as possible. Wash it around your tongue, like seawater around a coral reef and chew the wine. Chew it like an apple. Only when all this is done, you swallow the wine slowly and silently. Promise me, never to drink a nice wine without enjoying it. A crappy wine, well, we don’t drink those of course, life is too short for that. Heartily Santé.

Exercise
1. Hold your glass up to the light and look at the colour
2. Swirl the wine in the glass so that the aromas are released
3. Stick your nose in the glass and sniff up the smell
4. Take a sip but don’t swallow it
5. Purse your lips as if you’re going to whistle
6. Carefully suck air in through the wine
7. Do this a few times so that your whole mouth cavity is filled with the taste of wine
8. Swallow the wine slowly and enjoy it

Why slurp?
During the production process of wine the contact between grapes and oxygen is avoided as much as possible to avoid premature oxidation. That means that sometimes the wine is separated from oxygen for up to a year at times. But also after the bottling the wine is kept in a vacuum, in the bottle. That means that when the bottle is opened, the wine, the half dead drags itself out from under the cork, the taste molecules are still in a coma.

So to be able to enjoy wine to the fullest a reaction with oxygen is needed after you’ve opened then bottle. Swirling, with a circular motion of the wrist letting the wine rotate in the glass, insures that the fleating substances leave the wine and that the oxygen in the air can penetrate the wine.

When you’re slurping the wine undergoes some sort of accelerated aging process. The fast assimilation of wine and oxygen causes a reaction that strengthens the taste and sent molecules in the wine causing the aromas to become more apparent. To put it differently, because of the bubble bath in your mouth the taste bombs in the wine explode

Techy info

Louis Pasteur, who was asked by Napoleon in 1863 to study ‘the illnesses of the wine’, discovered the central role of oxygen. “Oxygen makes the wine: under the influence of oxygen the wine ages, oxygen modifies the sour beginning of a new wine and lets the bad taste disappear.” Pasteur proved that both the barrel and the bottle are indispensible in their own way for the making of a good wine: “the barrel provides the oxygen a young wines needs to age, while the air tight bottle keeps the oxygen away from the already aged wine, so it can be conserved.”

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