The simple guide to wine tasting
Organising your own tasting can be simple, rewarding and above all great fun. The ingredients that you will need are not complicated to assemble:
- Yourself and some friends
- A few different bottles of interesting wines
- Some basic information on these wines, (provided by your local independent wine merchant)
- A glass for each taster – contrary to popular belief it is not necessary to have a fresh glass for each wine, as long the wines are tasted in the correct order, which your local wine merchant can advise on too.
- Some nibbles and perhaps a spittoon of some description, (for the drivers).
Once you have assembled all the necessary ingredients here are a few pointers on how to taste wine. They are not intended to turn you in to the next Oz Clarke or Jilly Goolden, but they may help in pointing out what to look for. Too often we finish what’s in the glass before remembering to think about what was actually in it!
Sight:
Tilt your glass (preferably against a plain white background), so that you look at the wine from an angle. The colour of a wine can often tell you a lot about it. Very pale whites for example, are often young wines, (and potentially from cool climates). whereas they take on a more golden colour with age. Oak aged wines are much deeper in colour than wines that are not aged or fermented in oak. Red wines tend to lose their colour with age, losing the purplish rim that they have whilst young, turning in to a more bricky/mahogany colour with age.
Smell
After looking at the wine, the next step that wine taster’s make is to smell it. There is no need to vigorously swirl the wine so that you run the risk spilling it all over yourself, or your fellow tasters. A gentle swirl in the glass will be enough to release the aromas. Resist the temptation also to sniff the wine as if it was the last breath you are likely to take, rather gently and steadily breath in through the nose and concentrate on what you smell first off, as, on subsequent inhalations, your nose will not be as sensitive to similar aromas. Remember also that nobody can tell you what to smell; they can simply tell you what they can smell. Too often you see/hear wine merchants waxing lyrical about hand picked pomegranates and fresh saddle leather – Do not worry that you can only smell wine! Some grapes are very distinctive, such as Gewurztraminer, but that does not mean that every example will fit the same flavour/taste profile. Our advice is to give it a swirl, stick your nose in the glass and gently sniff; and if you can identify any fruit characteristics then all the better, if not don’t worry and as long as the wine doesn’t smell corky, or unappealing in any way then crack on to the most important task in the process: the tasting!
Taste
As we said before, too often the glass is empty before we get the chance to think about what was actually inside so here are a few pointers for assessing taste.
Firstly, take a fairly decent mouthful so that there is enough wine to coat the tongue. (Please note that at first this can be a little tricky, so if you happen to be tasting with people you don’t know for the first time, you may want to have a little practise in front of the mirror at home first – it might save the odd embarrassing dribble!) Once you have coated the tongue with the wine, gently draw in some air over the tongue and wine to accentuate the wines volatile characteristics…again, restraint is the key here as you don’t want to end up sounding like Hannibal Lecter fantasising about his favourite Chianti. The golden rule here is to remember that you can taste what you can taste and this should really be confirmation of what you have smelt. We taste different things on different areas of our tongues, sweetness is detected at the tip, sourness and acidity at the sides, bitterness at the back and saltiness at the front and sides. With the tasting done it is now time for the assessment.
Assessment
This is often the trickiest part of wine tasting and one that provokes the most discussion. There are a few key points to remember though:
Is the wine balanced? Is the fruit and tannin and acidity all in the right place or does the acidity seem piercingly harsh without enough fruit to back it up? Do you get an overwhelming drying out in the gums implying that the tannins are overpowering? Or, alternatively, does the velvety smooth fruit sit beautifully cradled in a soft envelope of tannin with a tantalising lick of acidity to keep things fresh? Sorry, wine merchant speak again!
Length: How long have the flavours lingered after you have actually tasted the wine? This can often be an indication of quality and the longer the ‘finish’ of the wine, the better the quality. Some professional tasters even put a time on the finish if it happens to be exceptionally long.
Enjoyment: Did you actually enjoy the wine? It is possible to see the merits in something whether you enjoy it or not, so be careful not to pronounce it as ‘horrible’ or ‘disgusting’ just because you don’t like it. We all have differing tastes and as such there are styles of wine out there for all of us, the main thing to remember is to enjoy finding out what your style might be!
