Ways of Sipping/Tasting Wine

[Kcwhippet]

All you're really doing is mixing oxygen with the wine and letting the aromatics flow around your mouth and into your sinuses and flavor components flow to all parts of your mouth. That way all the taste buds can experience the wine and your olfactory nerves get the full effect of all the aromatics. You can do it any way you want to, it's just that the method you describe is about the best way to get all the effect. I do it and so does just about everyone I know who's really serious about wine. It's not strictly a professional way to taste wine, it's the most efficient. Another thing we all do at a tasting is to spit out the wine. At a major tasting you can get quite inebriated before you realize it if you don't spit.