Swirling technique could be a bigger factor in determining a drink’s flavour than terroir. The bombshell comes on the back of an educational video by Wine Excruciast, which moves glass swirling right to the top of the ‘how to’ list for drinks lovers.
‘Basically,’ said Ian Stagram-Reel, who created the video, ‘the way you agitate your stemware has a bigger impact on your drink’s quality than where it’s grown, who’s made it or how it’s been aged.’
Offensive wrist action
According to Wine Excruciast, ‘millions possibly billions’ of people every day are ruining perfectly good bottles of wine by swirling techniques that are ‘naïve, wrong or plain offensive.’
The magazine describes the lack of swirling education as ‘a global scandal’, ‘bigger than climate change’ and ‘an easy way to fill 10 seconds on social media’.
‘Swirling opens up a wine’s flavours,’ says Stagram-Reel. ‘So we’d recommend it for everything except natural wine, Puglian reds and Jagermeister.’
Anti-grunt measure
Edwin Stretched-Braces from L’Estomac Distendé wine merchants welcomed the call for more precise guidelines on swirling technique.
‘The general public have been getting far too blasé about their knowledge,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘I even had two people with tattoos in here the other day lecturing me about sulphites.
‘So it’s wonderful that we’ve found something pointless and baffling to put the grunts back in their place and make them realise that we will always know more about drinks than they do.’
Swirling module 1.0
The educational body, the Wine and Sprit Evisceration Trust agreed, describing the findings as a ‘beautiful lifeline of unnecessary esoterica’.
‘This is brilliant,’ they told Fake Booze. ‘At a time when three-quarters of the world’s population have got a Level 1 classification, we needed a reason to get people back in the classroom, and a module in advanced glass rotation could be just the thing.’
New ranges
Drinks glass behemoths Riedel have reacted to the news by creating ‘clockwise’ and ‘anti-clockwise’ glasses for their key ranges.
‘Research that we’ve made up shows that the direction of swirl can have a real impact,’ said Riedel CEO, Smiegl Riedel. ‘And if you don’t believe us, you can read about it in the drinks magazines who have all uncritically printed our press release saying precisely that.’
According to Riedl, anti-clockwise swirling glasses give more elegance, whereas swirling clockwise enhances a drink’s body.
‘Our research shows that these things really do make a huge difference,’ said Riedel. ‘Particularly to our bank account.’
Meh
However, the new hardline thinking on swirling has yet to resonate with the public.
Fake Booze ran into John Public in the carpark of its local Marginslasher supermarket, where he was loading 14 bottles of Barfit Merlot into his boot.
‘I never knew you had to swirl drinks at all,’ he said.
‘And to be honest, if I want to watch things going round in circles and getting agitated I can just spend the evening scrolling through wine Twitter.’
Click here to read about why people who hold their glass by the bowl will all be deported
