Why do you suck?

I mean, why do you draw air through wine in the mouth?

I thought the point was to get the aromas going in your mouth, whilst avoiding getting distracted by heavy astringency. In other words it is a good technique for assessing vigorous young red wines that really need many more years to show at their best. Good quality young Bordeaux for example. That is what I was told many years ago, I believed it, and it seems to accord with my experience. Then I saw the video at the bottom of this post - saying exactly the opposite. So who would you say is right? BTW, if I want to assess the astringency I move the wine around my mouth and into my cheeks, and feel the friction on my teeth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-EuysdrTk0

I did not watch the video, so I don't know what they claimed. However, I read many years ago that pulling air in over the wine in your mouth helps release the esters up into your nasal cavities, where the real tasting action happens. -- Clark

I'd agree with Clark. More air = more stuff in the vapor phase that will get up into where you'll smell it. I would think this would work with any liquid.

I'll say this......if you feel the tannins on your tongue beware of the wine because it's going sear your throat. Tannins are most felt on the inside of the lips and on the upper palate. If truly heavy tannins also on the inside of the cheeks. Best way to feel tannins is not so much the inhalation of air but the firm pursing together of the lips and vigorous swirling inside the mouth.

As to the inhalation of air - some do it, and some don't but the logic is more to enhance the wine with the pressured intake of air, that in its way moving the "flavors" to the nostrils and indeed, as someone said earlier, that is where the action begins.

One word of warning to those not in practice - when "sucking in air" like that be careful not to suck so vigorously that some of the wine actually winds up going directly the nose or even more humorously to the lungs. Best to practice such inhalation first with non-sparkling water.

Best
Rogov

I did not watch the video, so I don't know what they claimed. However, I read many years ago that pulling air in over the wine in your mouth helps release the esters up into your nasal cavities, where the real tasting action happens. -- Clark

With apologies to Jane Nickles if she thinks I misrepresent her, she was saying that you suck in to assess the tannins. If the extent of the drying effect is large, in terms of distance from the back to the front of your tongue, the tannins in the wine are greater.

I really like a lot of her videos, but one or two seem to me to have strange ideas. I was wondering if it was just me - but it seems so far that you are backing up my view.

It really brings out the oak in anything that's had any kind of oak extraction. In a wine where the oak is really well integrated it can help assess what the oak is adding. In a wine that's over-oaked it can be like a mouth full of pencil shavings.