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Intro. to Wine Tasting By Lauriann Greene-Sollin, Sommelier-Conseil Reproduced with permission from French Wine Explorers - Wine Tours of France at www.wine-tours-france.com A step-by-step guide for beginners and great review for experienced tasters. Why do we taste wine instead of just drinking it? To better appreciate it’s qualities, to assess whether the wine is drinkable (like when the waiter pours a little of the wine you ordered into your glass for you to taste at a restaurant), and to be able to identify typical aromas and tastes of certain wines so you can see if you like them (and to help you remember which ones you liked when you next shop for wine). The more you know about any subject that is complex (like wine, music, art, etc.), the deeper your understanding and the more lively your enjoyment. Wine should first and foremost be a pleasure, and wine tasting should be fun and add to your pleasure in drinking wine.
It’s important to set the stage for a
group wine tasting.
Choose three wines for your first wine tasting: start with a white, then two reds. Some easy wines to start tasting with are Beaujolais, white wines like Sancerre or Chablis, or a Pinot Gris - they have typical aromas that are usually easy to recognize. You'll be able to taste three wines without becoming saturated; as you get more experience, you can increase the number of wines you taste in one tasting session. A couple of ground rules to remember: 1. It’s best NOT to drink water between glasses of wine (unless you’re really thirsty) – water rinses the mouth too clean, and can leave a taste of chlorine or bleach in your mouth. It's not necessary to rinse your glass between wines of the same color, but do rinse if you change from red to white wine, so as not to tint the color of the white wine with the leftover drops of red wine; 2. Hold the wine glass by the foot or the stem, never the bowl of the glass. If you hold it by the bowl, you cannot see the wine, and you will also heat the wine, which will change it’s characteristics. 3. Taste silently and note your impressions. You’ll share them later with your colleagues, but for now you don’t want to be influenced by their reactions, you want to note YOUR reactions. Trust your initial reactions, they are usually the most accurate. 4. Use simple words. Leave the snobby wine jargon for the snobs. 5. There are NO wrong answers! Everyone has their own perceptions, and there is usually a good reason if you come up with an aroma or a taste that no one else came up with. Go with your gut, and know that the more you taste, the more precise your responses will become. There are three basic steps to tasting wine: 1. The Look of the wine 2. The Smell of the wine (also called the Nose) 3. The Taste of the wine and the culmination of the tasting: The Evaluation of the Wine 1. The Look Hold the glass up in front of your eyes, and tilt it slightly. Try to come up with a name for the color you see. The color of the wine can tell you something about its age, where it comes from, and its concentration. Young red wines are the color of the grapes themselves: violet- or ruby-laced red. As they get older, they become true red, and then orangey or even brownish-red. White wines are generally a light straw or golden color, becoming deeper yellow as they age, and turning toward amber when they're really old. Here are the typical colors of red, white and rosé wines : · Red : ruby red (pinkish), violet-colored (dark and purpley), garnet red (orangey), brick red (burnt, orangey red, for older wines) · White : pale straw yellow, straw yellow, pale golden yellow, green-tinted pale golden yellow, golden yellow, deep yellow, amber-tinged yellow, amber (these last two are usually for older white wines, sweet white wines in particular take on these colors as they age) · Rosé: grey (the lightest possible pink or orangey tint), onion peel (light orangey), salmon (pink with an orange tint), orange with a pink tint, deep raspberry pink, light red, light pink Try also to ascertain the depth or intensity of the color. Wines from northern, cooler climates tend to be lighter in color (color not as intense) as wines from hotter, southern climates. Quality wines are more concentrated due to picking at optimum ripeness and low grape harvest yields, and will often be darker in color as a result. Note the color of your wine and its intensity on your paper. Now ascertain whether the wine is transparent. Winemakers these days work hard to make their wines as transparent and brilliant (reflective) as possible as this is the preference of the modern consumer. If the wine is not transparent (cloudy), or is kind of matte rather than brilliant, these can be signs that the wine was either not filtered (which isn't a defect), or has some kind of bottle sickness (which is a defect). Some winemakers choose not to filter their wines. Wines left deliberately unfiltered are, of course, drinkable ; sick wine, on the other hand, should not be drunk. From the look of the wine, we can tell something about it’s age, the grape variety (chardonnays tend to have a greenish tint, for example), where it was produced, and get the first indications of whether it is still in good shape and drinkable. 2. The Smell (the Nose) · The First Nose: as soon as the wine is poured into the glass, stick your nose into the bowl of the glass and smell it (yes, your nose needs to be INSIDE the bowl of the glass, not just at the rim !). Usually, this step comes before the Look. Take several small sniffs rather than a large one – a large sniff gives your brain too much information, and you become quickly saturated. The first nose will give you the very first impressions of the aromas of the wine. These first aromas are the most volatile, those that escape easily from the wine. Trust your first reactions, don’t search too hard. Try to identify families of aromas rather than specific aromas: words like "fruity" or "floral" are sufficient at this stage. ·
The Nose provides us with even more information about the wine. First of all, we look for off-odors that indicate a defect in the wine, like the corked smell, or smells of rotten apples, vinegar, or mustiness. We also look for sweet smells like port or madeira that could indicate that the wine has become oxidized. If we find these smells, the wine is defective and should be sent back. We also look for signs of quality from the Nose. A quality wine is usually aromatic. The more complex the aromas (the more families of aromas represented), the higher the quality of the wine. Certain aromas, like those of leather and other animal smells, can be a result of the advanced age of a wine, and can give you a hint as to the age of the wine. Aromas of vanilla, caramel, licorice or oak can tell you if the wine has been aged in oak barrels. Adding the aromas of the wine to the color gives you the beginning of a profile of this wine, which will help you identify it in the future, buy it again if you like it, and help you determine if it will go with the food you’re serving. 3. The Taste
How can you smell aromas once the wine is in your mouth ? You actually can smell aromas better through your mouth than through your nose. At the back of the mouth, there is a passageway that leads directly to the spot high in the nasal cavity that contains your smell receptors that inform your brain of what you are smelling. It’s a much more direct route to these receptors than through your nose, where long, winding canals lead up to the receptors. This effect of smelling through your mouth is called retro-olfaction, and it’s very important in wine tasting. After you have swallowed or spit out the wine, see if you can find more aromas than you had found by smelling with your nose, and note these aromas. Then compare the aromas you found with your mouth with those you found with your nose, and see if they are similar. If the aromas are basically the same, this is a sign of a well-made wine. If they are different, this can be jarring and therefore unpleasant, and thus possibly a sign of low quality. Now take another sip of the wine, slurp and chew it, and swallow it or spit it out. This time, you’re going to try to identify the tastes of the wine. White wines have three main taste components : acidity, alcohol, and "moelleux" or "gras", which translates to fatness/richness/smoothness. Red wines have these three taste components, but also a fourth, astringency, a result of the tannins in the wine. You’ll feel the acidity of the wine at the sides of your mouth next to your tongue where your salivary glands are located : a wine with a good acidity will make you salivate. The alcohol gives a sensation of heat in your mouth, and in your throat when you swallow it. The fatness is a sensation of unctuousness, roundness and fullness in the mouth. Astringency is a feeling of light dryness, pungency or "puckery" quality felt mostly in the middle of the tongue and in the cheeks. Note the degree to which you perceive each of these flavors. You can use a scale of 1-5 if you wish, with 1 being the lowest degree and 5 being the highest. What’s most important about identifying the tastes of the wine is finding the balance between them. In a good quality wine, no one taste will dominate. They will exist harmoniously together, enhancing each other rather than fighting with each other. A well-balanced wine is a quality wine. And finally : The Evaluation
Look over your notes, and try to come to a conclusion about this wine. Did it have a pleasing color, and was it transparent and brilliant to the eye? Was it aromatic? Were the aromas pleasing and complex? Did you find the same aromas when the wine was in your mouth as when you smelled it with your nose? Were the flavors of the wine in balance? Did it persist a long time on your palate? Finally, DID YOU LIKE IT ? This last judgment is strictly personal, and has nothing to do with objective quality and everything to do with whether you’re going to buy and drink this wine in the future. Give the wine a score based on your objective analysis: use the same 1-5 scale if you like. You might want to give a second score for how much you liked it. Save your wine tasting notes for your future reference, for meal planning and making purchases. With practice, these wine tasting steps become second nature and you can go through them very quickly. If you’re like me, you’ll end up slurping and chewing all of your beverages, even water! Try to "taste" your wine instead of just "drinking" it from now on. You’ll get a greater enjoyment from your wine and sharpen your skills as you go along. Who knows, you may end up being the next Robert Parker ! -- Lauriann Greene For an excellent article by Matt Kramer on
what makes a good wine taster, please go to: Hit your Back button to return.
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The room should be brightly lit, so you can clearly see the wine in the glass.
You should use clear glasses (never colored) that are designed for wine tasting:
they should close in toward the top to concentrate the aromas. The room should
be free of smoke and other smells that could distract from the smells of the
wine (tell your guests to not wear perfume that day!). Place a white tablecloth
on the tasting table – this helps you accurately assess the color of the wine.
Put some bread on the table if people want to cleanse their palates between
wines, although this is not really necessary. Provide paper and pencils so
everyone can note their impressions of the wine. Pour only a small amount of
wine in each glass, about a third full is enough. Provide some recepticles (like
wine buckets) for those who wish to spit out the wine instead of swallowing it
during the tasting (this is perfectly acceptable behavior – all wine
professionals do it). Spitting will allow you to taste more wine, since you
won’t get the effect of the alcohol.
