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Wine is more than an alcoholic beverage made of the fermented juice of grapes. If you think wine is just a fermented carbonated beverage that will get you drunk faster, then you are wrong. Wine is an important tool and also your good friend to help you to impress a date. To many people, the idea of the perfect romantic date is not so much the food that you are eating but the experience of dining. A good wine helps to relax the stressful atmosphere especially at your first date. Start with good wine, good conversation, good food, good dessert, and then later… whatever the mood leads you to.
Without question, a romantic dinner is one of those occasions that can’t hold without wine. If you want to impress your date, polish up your wine skills. It helps! According to a few self-proclaimed wine connoisseurs, appreciating wine is a three-step process. They swear on their Prada that you first have to sniff, swirl, and taste. Now let’s open that vineyard.

Sniff and Swirl
Pour your wine about one third into the wine glass (not into your refrigerated beer mug or stained coffee cup). Filling up one third is to allow plenty of room for swirling without spilling. Pick up your glass but be careful though, make sure you cup it (palms facing upwards) at the neck, and start swirling gently. Stick your nose inside the glass and take a whiff of the wine. At this point you are probably wondering what you are supposed to do. If you are a wine virgin, don’t worry, everyone feels embarrassed, insecure, and self conscious their first time. The trick here is to practice, practice and practice some more by utilizing different types of wines from different vineyards, countries, barrels, born-on dates, and so on and so forth.

Taste or Savour
The idea here is not to gulp it down like you are drinking Mountain Dew, instead try following along the lines of tasting. What you do is take a sip and let the wine linger on your tongue. Gargling is also recommended, but excessive gargling means you’re mixing up the taste of meat slices stuck between your teeth and the wine that you’re supposed to taste. Now, here comes the silly part, draw in air through your lips as if you are going in for a French kiss, over the wine to warm it thus releasing its flavors making it tastier.

Sight
Some say you’ll be able to develop this over long periods of tasting and getting acquainted with the appearance of wines. Just like how Darth Vader developed the powers of the Jedi that took a major evolution from good to evil. So there you have it, a moronically simple process, but monumentally difficult to perfect. Remember, taste is personal. You might not find a wine as appealing to you as to your drinking partner and don’t even waste your time disputing over it. Just move on, winers.