"Oenodynamic": Hydrodynamic of wine swirling

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fluid dynamics of wine swirling, revealing wave patterns and key parameters that influence the process, which is crucial for wine tasting and has broader applications.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the wave shapes and identifies governing dimensionless parameters in wine swirling fluid dynamics.

Findings

Various wave shapes are generated by swirling motion.

A set of dimensionless parameters governs the flow.

Understanding these parameters can improve wine tasting techniques.

Abstract

A crucial step in wine tasting is the so called swirling, necessary to release the bouquet of the wine: a gentle circular movement of the glass generates a wave propagating along the glass walls, enhancing oxygenation and mixing. Although being used in a large variety of other applications (e.g. cells cultures in orbital shaken bioreactors) this motion is not yet well understood. In this fluid dynamics video we show the large variety of waves shapes generated by this simple movement, and we identify a group of dimensionless parameters governing the flow.