You have heard it before: You must swirl your wine before you drink it.

And while certainly you don’t have to, for the maximum flavor, especially for a recently opened bottle of wine, you will want to properly swirl. The reason being is that swirling wine allows the compounds of the wine to disperse and oxygen to seep in, which opens up the true flavors. This process also releases the unique smells of a wine.

And if you don’t believe us, a Swiss Federal Institute of Technology study proved in 2011 that swirling wine in a glass helps enhance its flavor.

So now that you are convinced, you should know how to properly swirl.

Make sure to avoid holding the glass from the bowl so the natural heat from your hand does now increase the temperature of the wine. That would disrupt the flavor. Instead, hold it by the base or the stem with a few fingers and move the glass in a circular motion, allowing the wine to gently swirl freely. Doing this for anywhere between 5 to 20 seconds should do the trick.

When you are done, feel free to smell the flavors of the wine that have just been released and hold it up to the light to view the color and examine the quality of the wine.

If you are wine tasting, you will want to kick it off with whites before you move to reds. This is the best transition process for your taste buds. Reset your pallet with some bread and water, if available, in between wines.

Mt. Vernon Winery’s tasting room hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. The tasting room is an old restored milk house originally built in 1950. We offer 16 to 18 fabulous wines for tasting! Take the time during your visit to enjoy a glass or even a bottle of wine with your friends on the estate grounds. The winery has beautiful areas that overlook the vineyards with big red umbrellas, humming bird feeders, roses, flowers and trees to delight your senses.

Take a virtual tour of our tasting room here.