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Howard Helfant: Secrets of Tasting Wine



Howard Helfant became a wine expert in recent years after running a successful restaurant and a successful marketing consulting firm. He is also a venture capital investor, pouring money into worthy business start-ups and entrepreneurs to maximize his returns on investment. He has since visited the great wine producing areas of the world to find the best whites, reds, and blends he can and create a massive collection of the best wines in the world. Helfant didn’t have a taste for wine before he started on this new venture in recent years. But over time, he came to appreciate all the things that makes a great wine great. 


Howard Helfant freely admits that he had a hard time not swallowing the wine the first time he tried it in the Napa Valley. He didn’t understand the term ‘mouth feel’ at all. Now he gets that in order for a true wine connoisseur to judge a wine, one has to let the wine penetrate the palate with its full flavor. And there’s no better way to do that than by allowing the wine to swish around the mouth for a moment before swallowing. This allows the wine taster to gain an appreciation for the wine’s full taste profile. This is one of the main things that wine judges give passing or failing grades to wine labels. 

Howard Helfant took a while to get used to tasting wine fully using all of his senses and his full pallet, but today he loves to taste and judge wine to add to his collection. 

Follow Howard Helfant on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/helfanthoward
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