What?! Wine Tasting meditation??
Yes, it’s true! You can have your wine and meditate too!
Try it out with the 10 minute Guided Wine Tasting Meditation recording at the bottom of this post! (Psst: open up a bottle of wine first!)
OK, hear me out on this one. It may sound like a stretch, or even an excuse to drink more wine, but wine tasting can actually provide the same benefits as meditation. When you mindfully do any task, including wine tasting, you are actually doing your brain and your body a lot of good. This is true only in moderation, of course. (Pull those lips away from the bottle and pour yourself a taste: About 3 ounces or 1/4 glass of wine).
As a bonus, mindfully wine tasting trains your nose and palate to taste wine the way that sommeliers are trained – so not only will you be practicing mindful meditation, but you will also become a better taster! You will probably also find that when you taste wine in this way, you enjoy it even more. It’s a wine win! (Ahem…I mean, win win!)
Why is Meditation so great?
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years but has only recently become mainstream in the western culture. Nowadays, meditation is touted by spiritual and western practitioners alike for its health benefits. Even tech companies like Google encourage employees to take meditation breaks. In fact, Google has a labyrinth in their Mountain View complex where employees can go to practice walking meditation.
The benefits of meditation are innumerable. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Meditation can benefit both your emotional well-being and your overall health”.
The emotional benefits include:
- Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations
- Reducing negative emotions
- Increasing imagination and creativity
- Increasing patience and tolerance
- Increasing self-awareness
Meditation may also help people manage symptoms of medical conditions such as:
- Anxiety
- Asthma
- Cancer
- Chronic pain
- Depression
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
Source: Mayo Clinic
Have you practiced meditation? If so, then you’ve probably experienced some of these benefits. Personally, meditation helps me to slow down and feel at peace with everything. I find it to be the most effective way to alleviate stress and anxiety in a short amount of time. Adding a little wine to this practice only enhances the euphoria that I get from meditating!
Mindfulness Meditation:
Mindfulness is a form of meditation based on being present with whatever it is you are doing, from sitting and breathing to walking and even eating. According to Mindful.org: “Whenever you bring awareness to what you’re directly experiencing via your senses, you’re being mindful.”
Where does WINE come in??
When you taste wine, you are actually practicing mindfulness meditation. I’m not talking about mindlessly drinking wine while catching up with a friend or eating dinner (although I do think there are benefits to that as well). What I’m referring to is slowing down and using your senses to really taste your wine without distractions. This is a skill that sommeliers use when blind tasting, which is an exercise to attempt to identify a wine without knowing what’s inside the bottle. Anyone can taste wine in this way, it just takes intention.
Mindful wine tasting brings you to the present moment. It’s especially effective because you do this through your senses: sight, smell, taste and touch.
The 4 steps to wine tasting using your senses looks like this:
- Sight: Look at the wine’s color and viscosity
- Smell: Swirl your glass and smell the wine, thinking about the different aromas (fruit, oak, earth, etc)
- Taste: Sip your wine and breathe in some air, tasting the fruit, oak, acidity and balance of the wine
- Touch: Take another sip and think about how it feels (viscous, light, acidic, tannic, alcoholic, etc)
I highly recommend reading a thorough explanation on how to taste wine from The Wine Folly in her post: How to Taste Wine and Develop Your Palate.
Benefits of Wine Tasting Meditation:
- You will become a better taster and be able to describe wine more effectively
- You will reduce stress and feel at peace from being mindful
- You will appreciate your wine more by paying close attention to all of its nuances
- You will be meditating WHILE having a glass of wine…does it get any better than that??
Ready to start YOUR Wine Tasting Meditation?
To help you get started with this new practice of wine tasting, I’ve included a 10 minute guided recording below. (The recording is split into two parts: first listen to the intro, which is about a minute and a half, followed by the 8 and a half minute guided wine tasting.
Ready to feel the amazing benefits of wine tasting meditation?! Get yourself a bottle of wine and a wine glass and hit play!
Start by listening to this short intro first:
Once you have your bottle of (red) wine open, sit down at a table with a wine glass and let your wine meditation begin!