What's in a swirl? Secrets of the wine taster's gesture | Life and style | The Guardian

 

What's in a swirl? Secrets of the wine taster's gesture

Mathematical research into the wine buff's ritual reveals the perfect action to release complex aromas in a glass

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• Thursday 24 November 2011 16.05 GMT

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How it should be done: Eva Joly, the Greens-Europe-Ecology candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, tastes red wine during a visit to Rully. Photograph: Robert Pratta/Reuters

Given a glass of wine to taste, most people will automatically swirl it around and take a good sniff. But in the 21st-century quest for higher knowledge, even this simple gesture has not escaped scientific scrutiny.

Now it appears there may indeed be a right and a wrong way to perform this ritual aimed at getting the best from the drink, as wine buffs have long argued.

Swiss researchers have been applying mathematics to establish the best way to turn a glass. For three years, scientists at the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne studied what is technically known as orbital agitation, working with winemakers and sommeliers to find the "perfect gesture".

Mohammed Farhat, one of the researchers, said: "We noticed that the mechanism involved in turning the wine in the glass was both efficient in terms of mixing gently but also very economical in terms of energy. However, it is almost impossible to create a mathematical model of this and involves some very complicated aspects of the dynamics of fluids."

Farhat said the research had important implications for the pharmaceutical industry. It is possible the gentle hand movement that releases the aromas in wine could be applied to large quantities of cells.

"In turning the glass we noticed this created a wave of wine up and down and in and out the side of the glass in which all the liquid was mixed," he told Le Figaro.