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Wine Tasting Holidays Offer a Wide Variety of Tastes

February 22nd, 2010 · Wine Tasting Tours

Wine tasting holidays are very popular in Europe. Many travel agencies organize wine tasting holidays in different regions of the continent. A wine tasting holiday program of a reputed agency would include superb champagne weekends, wine tours in Chile, South Africa and New Zealand, gourmet holidays, vineyard walks, luxury wine cruises and exciting new tours.


Wine tasting holidays are great and bring a wonderful experience to your and your travel partners; you will enjoy special visits to cutting edge wineries, have a private tasting at top chateaux and even be invited into growers’ cellars and discover many varieties of great wines.


You can meet the winemakers and the owners of great chateaux, enjoy gourmet food and have superb tastings. You will not be able to experience these excitements if you visit these wineries alone as a person. Wine tasting holidays in different countries gives a unique experience. If you go for a wine tasting holiday in France, you will find unique experiences which you not find if you visit a similar place in Italy.


If you go for a wine tasting holidays in France, you will taken for a ride in the French vineyards of Bordeaux, Rhone, Burgundy, Alsace and Provence. You can take the tour in different forms. You can take the ride in a chartered bus, or in a private luxury car or a cruise, and the cost will vary accordingly.


It is better to have a Wine Guide


The operators generally provide a wine guide with the party. These people are generally very friendly and approachable. They know quite well that in a party there will be all levels of excitement and interest. If you do not know the region well, it is always advisable to take the help of a wine guide in a tour.


A good wine guide in a wine tasting holiday can tell you the inside story, the gossip, the real history, the run down on the vintages, the producers and the wines, without the PR, the sales pitch or national chauvinism. If you come back without knowing the details of these places, what is the point in spending so much money and going for wine tasting holidays? If you know the details of the region, you can feel the place.


The price of wine tasting holidays depends on which region you are going to travel and make sure to confirm rates and read all the fine print before heading out to your getaway.

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What Does A Wine Tasting Guide Involve?

February 21st, 2010 · Wine Tasting Parties, Wine Tasting Tips

You are a novice in wine tasting and you are invited to a home wine tasting party by a close friend. Bad scenario, you would think, because you cannot go to the party since you know next-to-nothing about wine, and you cannot excuse yourself because your friend is very close and will not feel good about it.


Check the Web for a Wine Tasting Guide


This is not a time to panic. All you have to do is click your mouse and you will find a list of sites which can provide you with a comprehensive wine tasting guide which will give the basics for the party.


Some Tips for Wine Testing Which Will Make your Wine Tasting Guide More Efficient


The first thing you will have to do is to observe the color of the wine and see whether it is clear or cloudy. In order to do this, you will have to hold it against something white (it is most likely that your hosts will provide you with the white linen table cloth for this purpose)


The next step is to swirl the wine glass with a tiny flick of your wrist. Once you do this you will observe a few streak of wine forming on the glass. These streaks are called the legs of the wine and these will help the taster determine the type of the body of the wine.


The swirling of the glass will also release the smell out of the glass. There are a gazillion aromas and you will have to attach the smell you get to a label and write it down


After going through these steps, you will need to throw the wine in your glass in the special buckets or other place the hosts have organized for you.


Many people also prefer to spit out the wine from their mouth rather than drink it. Though it sounds pretty crass, you actually do not have much of a choice if you like to keep tasting wines. Otherwise, by the end of an hour, you will not be in a position to even spell your name, forget about qualifying any wine.


Look at the above list – for all practical purposes this is a good wine tasting guide. This is the basics of all that you need to know. For further details, you can easily access any wine tasting guide from the Internet.

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Why Wine Tasting Glasses are Important

February 20th, 2010 · Serving Wine, Wine Gifts, Wine Tasting Tips

For many people wine tasting is a profession, something that cannot be trifled with. Yet, for some others, wine tasting is a way of having fun and enjoying life. However, both the parties agree that wine tasting glasses are extremely important during wine tasting – whether the latter is done for fun or as a profession.


What is the ‘Bouquet’?


If you have been around wine-tasting parties or events you would have definitely heard this term. Okay, this does not refer to the flowers on the table – actually it does not refer to any flower bouquet. What it means is the aroma of the wine. The smell of the wine you are tasting or you are going to taste, is called the bouquet. The bouquet as a term is interchangeable with the term, ‘nose’ which is used most commonly at very refined wine-tasting ceremonies.


In case you did not know how to get the bouquet or the nose out of the wine, the following few lines will explain it to you. The wine tasting glasses are kept on the table and filled with the wine that you are supposed to taste. The wine tasting glasses are usually shaped like bulbs to produce the right smell while tasting. The lower and large part of the wine tasting glasses usually allow for the space that it is needed to swirl the wine, while the narrow mouth allows the aroma to be “captured’ by your nose.


The wine is then stirred, or rather swirled, in the glass and the aroma captured when it leaves the wine tasting glasses. The swirl is done is a specific way and it would be good if you have a few rounds the practice at home with water, lest you will spill wine on the white linens at the party.


The swirling movement has to be extremely exact, while totally circular so that wine completes a round in the glass without leaving the glass. The gentle swirl should be sufficient for the wine to make at least two rounds in the glass. The stirring would throw up the wine’s smell for you to take note of it.


This smell is called the bouquet – some wines do smell like flowers, but the name is not generated from this aspect. Whatever may be the reason for calling the smell of the wine a ‘bouquet’, the process has proved that the wine tasting glasses do play a very important role.

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