|
|
Wine Tasting Like a Pro
There is no doubt that the best way to learn about wine is to start tasting wine. Try a few different varietals, different types of grapes make different tasting wines. Before you choose your favorite, experiment and taste with other people it’s more fun to learn in a group. Remember no matter how much you know there is always more to learn. Read the handy tips in this section and start to explore the different regions and vineyards like a pro. Remember have some fun learning.
Preliminary Steps
Open the bottle, check the cork for bleeding (a Cork with wine fingers) and dryness (a cork that crumbles) could indicate that the wine has not been stored properly and could be compromised. Smell the cork. If it smells moldy, the wine could be spoiled.
Second, pour a small amount of wine (a sip’s worth) into a clear glass. Swirl the wine in the glass to allow the wine to oxygenate and allow the flavors to open up.
Wine Tasting
There are three basic components when tasting and evaluating a wine. They are (1) look, (2) smell and (3) taste.
1. Look
As mentioned above, pour the wine into a clear glass, and, if you desire, hold the glass in front of a white background (i.e. a tablecloth or piece of paper). This will allow you to properly examine the color of the wine.
The color of wine varies tremendously, even within the same type of wine.
White wines can range in color from yellow to brown to green. More color in a white wine usually indicates more flavor and age, although a white wine with a brown color may have gone bad. Time does not generally improve the quality of most white wines; in general, the quality of white wine decreases with age.
Red wines can vary in color from a pale red to a deep brown red. As red wines age, they usually become lighter in color. Unlike white wine, red wines generally improve with age.
Tilt the glass and look at the edge or the “rim” of the wine. A more purple color generally indicates a wine’s youth. A browner color generally indicates maturity. You can estimate the age of a red wine by observing its rim.
Swirl the wine in the glass. As mentioned above, this serves to oxygenate the wine. For purposes of look, swirling the glass produces “legs” of wine down the inside of the glass. These legs allow you to observe the body of the wine. Prominent legs generally indicate a thicker-bodied wine, with a higher alcohol content and/or sweetness level.
2. Smell
Swirl the wine in the glass again. This oxygenates the wine and allows the flavors to open up.
Take a quick first smell. This will allow you to form an initial impression.
Take a second deeper smell.
Think about the aroma. As a novice, it may be difficult to describe in words the aroma of a wine. However, as you become more experienced, you will notice definitive similarities and differences. Certain aromas commonly smelled are fruit, flowers, earth, wood, herbs and spices. There are many more uncommon aromas that a wine might conjure up in your mind, such as smoke, minerals or even petrol!
3. Taste
Ah, at last, the taste! The most important quality you are looking for is the balance between a wine’s sweetness and its acidity. There are three steps to actual tasting of the wine.
Initial Taste: As the wine hits your taste buds, you will form an initial impression as to the wine’s taste.
Taste: Swirl the wine around in your mouth, under your tongue, to the top of your mouth. You can also draw some air into your mouth while swishing it around to further aerate and expand the flavors of the wine.
Think of the following while tasting: is the wine light, heavy, rich, smooth or harsh? You may also assign a flavor to what you are tasting. Flavors you may taste are fruits like cherry, currant, apple, blueberry, fig, plum, and raisin. Floral smells, mineral, smoke, licorice, pepper, olive, herbs and/or spices notes are often present in wine. There are infinite flavors that you may taste or that a wine might conjure up in your mind. Tasting several flavors at once is also common with flavor combinations being infinite.
Aftertaste: Spit the wine out into a bucket. While novices generally swallow wine when tasting, this has obvious effects (intoxication) if you are tasting many wines in one sitting; this is not desirable if you are attempting to accurately assess a wine.
The aftertaste can be assessed from the coating of wine that remains in your mouth after spitting it out. Does the taste remain in your mouth or disintegrate quickly? Is the aftertaste pleasant, smooth, harsh, alcoholic, or fruity? Are the flavors in the aftertaste different from the flavors in the taste, or are they the same?
Evaluation
You can evaluate a wine after tasting either informally or formally.
Informally, reflect on the overall flavor and balance of the wine. Is the taste appropriate for the type of wine?
Formally, you can assign a point score to the wine to determine its quality. This is a subjective measure of a wine’s quality, as the strengths and weakness you may detect in a wine can be very different from those detected by someone else tasting the same wine.
|
|