Transcript:
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:48:07
Hello, bonjour, and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video. Today I want to answer a question that I get asked very often is can you swirl a glass of sparkling wine? Should you swirl it? Can you swirl it? Is it bad for the wine? Is it good for tasting? Is it better to do so?
00:00:48:09 – 00:01:17:12
And more broadly, how do you assess the quality of a sparkling wine and how do you enjoy it? To the most, the problem, the sort of issue that we have with sparkling wine is that it gets served in flutes, these type of wine glasses, and I’ll show you in a second. Some may also serve it in coupes. You know those very long and narrow glasses of wine?
00:01:17:13 – 00:01:40:02
Forget about coupes. I don’t like them at all, they’re bad for everything. You can’t smell the wine, you can’t taste the wine, You can’t swirl the wine. But with a flute, well, the problem, and I’ll show you right now, when you serve a glass of sparkling wine in a flute—here we are—well, the problem with the flute is that they are very high.
00:01:40:02 – 00:02:23:17
And you’ve seen this. You’ve done this before. They are very high. Flutes are fantastic for a couple of things. A flute does two things really, really well. They do others less well. What’s good with the flute is that one, they look fantastic. You can see the bubbles coming up the glass, and that’s beautiful and that’s spectacular. The second thing that a flute does really well is that because it’s quite narrow, there’s a small surface of contact with the air, so it’ll keep the bubbles for a little longer so you can sit on your glass of sparkling wine for a little longer.
00:02:23:20 – 00:02:48:03
So flutes are perfect when you’re toasting with your friends and you want to sip on your glass of sparkling for a little while. It will keep this business the liveliness of the sparkling for a long time. But the problem is that you can’t really smell a glass of sparkling wine that way. Yeah, and you smell a little few things, but it’s not fantastic.
00:02:48:03 – 00:03:15:03
And obviously you cannot swirl on your glass of wine. I’ve talked a few times here how important it is to assess the quality of the wine, to be able to smell it properly. It’s often I say that it’s like a flower as well. It’s good that a flower looks good. It’s good that a wine tastes good, but it’s definitely a bonus if you can also smell a flower and enjoy the bouquet.
00:03:15:07 – 00:03:40:07
Same thing with a wine. You can’t really do that with a flute. So how do you go about tasting a sparkling wine properly? Here is how I would do it professionally if I really wanted to know how good a sparkling wine is. When I want to assess and write about a wine, how do I serve it? I would use this type of wine glass.
00:03:40:07 – 00:04:05:06
So this is more of a red tasting wine glass proper big wide wine glass. And I would pour a little bit of my sparkling wine and wait for it to settle down. The problem I find when I’ve just poured a sparkling wine like this is that the glass is full of CO2. So if I go in and sniff it, I get a big burst of CO2.
00:04:05:06 – 00:04:32:05
And that’s not good. My trick, my tip for this is to blow a little air in. So it removes the CO2 that tends to settle in the glass of wine because it’s heavier than air. So I would blow and I would definitely swirl on that glass of sparkling wine. And now I can assess all the different nuances that this wine has.
00:04:32:05 – 00:04:51:12
I can smell a bit of vanilla here. It’s a little yeasty, it’s a bit buttery, it’s got a bit of citrus as well. It’s got some notes of flowers. It’s actually quite a nice little wine here. And then I would taste it, obviously.
00:04:51:14 – 00:05:22:02
The advantage here also is that it removes the the aggressive first fizziness that a sparkling wine has. So when I get to taste it, it’s a little tamed down in terms of its fizziness. So you actually get the texture of the wine a little more. So you can definitely swirl on a glass of sparkling wine that way. The problem here is that doing this, these sparkling wine is going to lose its fizziness very, very quickly.
00:05:22:02 – 00:05:52:18
So you can’t really serve this to your friends because after a couple of minutes, well, this wine will be all flabby and would have lost all its fizziness. You can already see that it’s starting to lose its bubbles very, very quickly because all the bubbles are coming up out very quickly because there’s a large surface of contact. So that’s good for tasting professionally and assessing a glass of sparkling wine, but not really good for serving your sparkling wine.
00:05:52:18 – 00:06:21:13
The middle ground would be for me, this type of wine glass. This is more of a white wine tasting glass and it’s a bit of the middle ground. It’s not too wide, it’s not too tall. And you can definitely serve a solid glass of sparkling wine in such a glass. You can still see the bubbles. It’s not too wide, so it’s not going to lose its fizziness too quickly.
00:06:21:15 – 00:06:56:14
And on this, you can certainly swirl your glass of wine, blow out the CO2 a little bit. And here you can sniff it, definitely, and you can taste it and enjoy the bouquet really well and you can also taste it. And it’s not going to lose its fizziness too quickly. Ooh, perfect. It’s lost a little bit of that aggressive, really fluffy fizziness from the initial pouring.
00:06:56:16 – 00:07:21:13
And now it’s perfect to taste and it’s still going to remain lively for a little while. So if I was receiving, serving wine connoisseur or friends at home, I would definitely use this type of glass so everyone can really sniff on the wine, can swirl the wine and enjoy it really well, if it was a very expensive sparkling wine as well, like a top cuvée champagne, for example.
00:07:21:15 – 00:07:45:02
Like one of those for example, Prestige Cuvee for everyone to be able to enjoy it really well and not be stuck with these glasses where you can’t really taste and smell the wine properly. I would serve it that way. But to be honest, when I’m serving every day type of sparkling wine and wine, I want to toast with friends on a birthday or Christmas or whatever.
00:07:45:04 – 00:08:16:12
I do personally, of course, use those flutes because they do look absolutely gorgeous and that’s what we use them for. But now, you know, professional sparkling wine tasting glass, as far as I’m concerned, and semi semi professional sparkling wine glass, that would be my choice for enjoying and for presenting for serving a glass of sparkling wine. My views on can you swirl a glass of sparkling wine, should you?
00:08:16:14 – 00:08:37:24
Well now you know. Thanks for watching and I would see you soon in the wonderful world of wine Cheers.
