1 November 2007 by Sandy Hemphill
Proper Pour
Some people make a great deal of fuss where serving wine is concerned. They present a showy, snooty ceremony with much pomp and circumstance attached.
Other people think that as long as it’s available, it’s just fine.And some of us understand that wine is meant for fun and enjoyment. Flexibility is no problem and the setting may direct the show. Or the pour.
There is a method of serving wine, however, that is known as a proper pour. It’s certainly not required and it’s nothing mysterious. All we need is a bottle of wine and a wine glass.
Any wine glass will do for a proper pour. Wine glasses come in all shapes and sizes but they all have a thing or two in common. It’s these common elements that make the difference.
Every wine glass has a rounded bowl with a rim that is smaller in circumference than the widest part of the bowl. It’s the widest part of the bowl that makes the difference. But the smaller opening is important, too.
Before we consider why the widest and smallest parts of the bowl are so important to a proper pour, we must consider biology.
Our sense of taste can identify only four flavors – sweet, salty, bitter, and acid. Different spots on our tongues are sensitive to different flavors but it’s a combination of only these four flavors that make up everything we taste.
Our sense of smell, however, is really busy. There are more than 10,000 different aromas that have been isolated and identified. It’s the combined effect of these aromas that make eating so much fun.
Another consideration we must visit here is oxidation, a chemical reaction that takes place when all other chemicals come in contact with oxygen. When our favorite wine has come in contact with oxygen, the flavor and aromas of the wine change.
The altering of the wine’s characteristics is called bloom and a wine is said to bloom once the bottle has been open a while, once the wine in the glass has been swirled around a bit, or allowed to stand during a meal. Many wine lovers actually prefer the second glass of wine poured from a bottle over the first glass because the opened bottle has been gently oxidized, bloomed.
But back to that proper pour. Make a mental note of the widest part of the bowl of the wine glass. Pour the wine only to this level, usually only about a third of the way full.
It’s at this part of the glass, the widest, that the wine is exposed to the most oxygen. Blooming occurs faster and more evenly. Gently swirling the glass speeds up the process a bit.
With a proper pour, we’re left with a mostly empty glass. An empty glass that is smaller at the top opening than at the filled level below. This empty, narrowing, part of the glass funnels the aromas of the wine up through the glass to our incredibly busy and highly perceptive noses, where we can breathe in that fabulous bouquet that is blooming in the bottom of the glass.
It’s this play of the oxygen with the shape of the glass and our own sensory perceptions that makes a proper pour much more pleasant than pompous.
Try it at home but have fun noticing it when you’re out and about at different dining establishments.
In a fine dining setting where you are enjoying a bottle of wine tableside during dinner, your waiter will fill your glass only to the widest part of the bowl. A proper pour that allows you to enjoy your bottle of wine to the fullest.
In a more casual environment, where you’re ordering your wine by the glass, the glass will be mostly full. This isn’t done so much for enhancement of the experience of the wine but for the financial value. Most people would feel slighted if they ordered a glass of wine that was mostly empty.
So a proper pour actually depends upon perception – that of flavor or finances. And flexibility is a must.