How to Taste Wine

Guide Note: Are you looking to impress your friends? Prepare for a big date? Or just ensure that the sommelier at that fancy restaurant doesn't intimidate you? Relax! This guide to How to Taste Wine will have you making expert observations in no time.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

  • Wine is an amazing beverage. It enhances a great meal, soothes the soul, acts as a prelude to a romantic evening, and is even reputed to have health benefits. By removing some of the mystery surrounding the tasting process, you'll be better prepared to select and enjoy wine.

Mahalo Daily How to Taste Wine

Get Educated About Wine

  • While you may already know how to drink wine, tasting is not just drinking. You can certainly taste and assess wine without extensive education, but you'll be better able to communicate results to others if you do some preparation. Some of the topics you'll want to explore are:
  1. Vocabulary. Wine has its own "language", and it helps if you know some basic wine terms.
    • (Photo by Kimberlee Kessler Design)
      (Photo by Kimberlee Kessler Design)
    • Aroma is an individual component of the smell of a wine. The Wine Aroma Wheel gives you common terms to help you describe aroma. All of the individual aromas combine to form the wine's bouquet.
    • Balance refers to the fact that a good wine will have elements of acidity, astringency (also referred to as tannins) and fruit.
    • Body is the sense of fullness a wine gives as it enters the mouth.
    • Finish, or aftertaste, is the taste left in the mouth after the wine has been swallowed. A wine with a finish that lasts for a while is said to be long.
  2. Grapes. It's useful to research the specific varietal you'll be tasting.
  3. Scoring. While it is not necessary to score wine, consistent use of a scoring system enables you to make comparisons between wines you've tasted. There are several systems used. A simple one is the UC Davis Wine Scoring system.

Gather Your Supplies

  • In addition to the wine, or wines, you'll be tasting, you need a few simple items.
  1. The most important thing you need for tasting, other than the wine, is your glass.
    1. The foot, or base of the glass, should be flat and stable, to avoid tipping over and spilling the wine.
    2. The stem should be attached firmly to the base, and be long enough that it can be held without your hand touching the bowl.
    3. A good basic tasting glass will have a rounded bowl with a rim that's smaller than the maximum diameter of the glass, curved in slightly to concentrate the aromas, with a capacity of about 12 ounces.
    • Make sure the glass is clean and dry with no detergent residue.
  2. You'll also want a small bowl to serve as a spittoon. Swallowing the wine blunts your powers of observation.
  3. A wine journal, wine record sheets, or just a pad and pencil should be used to record your observations.
  • If you'll be reusing your glass to taste additional wines, you'll also need
  1. A pitcher of water to rinse the glass,
  2. A bucket to empty the rinse water in,
  3. A lint free cloth to dry the glass thoroughly, and
  4. Bread, or dry biscuits, to cleanse the palate between wines.
  • If you're in control of the space you'll be tasting in, you also want to make sure:
  1. There are no distracting smells or aromas in the room.
  2. You have plenty of light. A natural, or incandescent, light source is better than fluorescent.
  3. A white tablecloth, or piece of white mat board, will help when you evaluate color.

Prepare the Wine

  • Although there is no complicated preparation needed, there are a few things you can do to make sure your wine is tasted under optimal conditions.
(Photo by Maciej Lewandowski)
(Photo by Maciej Lewandowski)
  1. If you're tasting several wines, you need to determine the order that you'll taste them in. A good guideline is to make sure that you taste a light wine before an intensely flavored wine. So, arrange the wines in this order:
    • white before red, then
    • youngest to oldest, and then
    • driest to sweetest.
  2. Make sure the wine is at the right temperature.
    • Most red wines should be served at a little below room temperature, about 64°F.
    • Most white wines should served a little above refrigerator temperature, about 44°F.
  3. Open the bottle. You'll probably need to use a corkscrew.
  4. Decant the wine if it is an older red wine which has developed sediment. To properly decant an older wine, you'll need a candle, or other light source, and decanter. Here's the procedure:
    • Stand the bottle up for several hours to allow the sediment to settle at the bottom.
    • Light the candle, or turn on the lamp.
    • Hold the bottle of wine so that the candle or lamp shines though the base of the neck of the wine bottle as you pour.
    • Begin pouring the wine into the decanter, very slowly.
    • Be careful not to shake the bottle, because it might disturb the sediment.
    • When you have poured out about half of the wine, begin looking for sediment in the neck.
    • Stop pouring when any sediment appears in the neck of the bottle.
    • Discard the wine remaining in the bottle.
    • Proceed with the tasting. If this is an older wine, you'll want to begin the tasting as soon as you've decanted the wine, as its character will change and evolve rapidly when exposed to the air.
  5. Pour a small amount of wine into the glass, making sure the glass is no more than 1/3 full.

Look at the Wine

  • Looking at the wine enables you to get some general information about the wine before you taste it. White wines generally get darker with age, while red wines get lighter. A young red wine, for example will be bright, almost purple, while a wine that is past its prime will have a brown tinge.
(Creative Commons photo by Rick Kimpel)
(Creative Commons photo by Rick Kimpel)
  1. Look at the cork.
    • It should be slightly damp, to indicate that the wine has been stored properly.
    • There should be no signs of mold or mildew.
    • It's fine if there are crystals on the end of the cork. These are produced as the wine matures.
  2. Pick up the glass holding it by the stem or the foot. If you hold it by the bowl, the warmth of your hand could warm the wine above the proper temperature.
  3. Hold the wine glass up to the light, in front of a white background, if possible.
    • Notice the wine's clarity — there should be no haze or visible sediment.
    • Look at both the hue and the intensity of the color.
    • Make sure you look at the edges, as changes in color show there first.
  4. If you're tasting a sparkling wine, notice the size and quantity of the bubbles.
  5. Swirl the wine around the glass, and allow it to flow down the sides to view the legs. "Legs" or "tears" are thin rivulets of wine that may appear on the sides of the glass after swirling. Some people feel that legs are indicative of a full-bodied wine, but in actuality they're just related to the alcohol content. Here's the scientific explanation for what's going on:
    • Alcohol has a lower surface tension than water. It also evaporates faster than water. When you swirl the wine, a thin sheet of wine is left on the surface of the glass. As the wine warms to room temperature, the alcohol evaporates, and the surface tension of the wine changes, resulting in the wine "pulling together" and forming the characteristic "legs" running down the glass.
  6. Set the glass down, and record your observations on your record sheet.

Smell the Wine

  • While smelling wine, you're looking to pick out individual aromas. Aromas are described in terms of other common items. Is that mango? Oak? Pineapple? Asparagus? Try to identify as many different aromas as you can. You'll get better at this with experience.
  1. Hold the glass a few inches away from your nose, and smell.
  2. Move the glass up to your nose and smell again.
  3. Swirl the wine around in the glass, to aerate it, and smell again.
  4. Set the glass down, and record your observations on your record sheet.

Taste the Wine

  • Now you're finally ready to taste the wine. When the wine hits your tongue, take a moment to notice how it feels. It is full bodied or thin? Thick and luscious, or light and refreshing? When you finally actually taste the wine, you'll want to observe all aspects of its taste — intensity, acidity, tannin, sweetness, and so forth — in addition to making an overall assessment of its flavor.
  1. Take a small sip.
    • (Photo by Sarah Eitel)
      (Photo by Sarah Eitel)
    • Let it sit on your tongue for a minute.
    • Notice how it feels in your mouth.
    • Make your first observations about the taste.
    • Swallow, or spit the wine into the bucket.
  2. Take another small sip, and as you do, suck some air in, mixing the air with the wine in your mouth.
    • What tastes do you notice now, that you didn't the first time?
    • Swallow, or spit the wine into the bucket.
  3. Take one more small sip, and roll it around your mouth, while tasting. This is called "chewing" the wine.
    • Are there additional aspects to the wine that you notice now?
    • Swallow.
    • Notice the aftertaste, or finish, of the wine.
  4. Set the glass down, and record your observations on your record sheet.
  • If you're tasting another wine, you want to be sure that both your palate and your glass are ready for the next wine, with no traces of the first remaining. If you don't have a new glass, you can clean your glass out in this way:
  1. Pour a small amount of water into the glass.
  2. Swirl it around.
  3. Repeat.
  4. Dry the glass with a lint free cloth. Even a small amount of water left in the glass can interfere with the taste, so drying the glass is important.
  5. Take a small bite of bread, or a dry plain biscuit or cracker, to cleanse your palate before beginning the tasting process again. Do not drink water after having the bread or cracker.

Conclusion

  • Now you can relax, and drink the wine! As you get more experienced, your observations will become more detailed. You'll understand the descriptions you see on wine lists, and on those little cards displayed with a wine in the shop. The more wine tasting that you do, the more you'll enjoy your wine drinking!

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