Wine Tasting


Even more rationale for why wine should be guest-of-honor at all your parties--wine- tasting! If you find yourself enjoying more wine, you'll begin to develop a taste for certain styles and form opinions about wine in general. After speaking with some of your friends, you'll probably discover that they've developed their own tastes and opinions as well. What could be better than inviting them over and tasting a bunch of wines together? In other words, a wine party! People have been holding wine tasting for centuries, and a good time will be had by all.

Appraisal starts with the appropriate shaped glass, the international XL4 tasting glass is standard. The narrow top end of the glass helps contain the wine while swirling to concentrate the vapors. The hand should hold the stem and the glass should be clear (complete abscence of color) so that the color and clarity of the wine can be assessed.

When assessing or appraising a wine we use four of our five senses; sight, smell, taste, and feel.

Sight

You make two judgements when you look at wine. One is the color, both the hue and the intensity. The other is appearance. From this it is possible to make some judgements about the condition and the age of the wine. The colors of a white wine may be water white, yellow, gold, straw yellow, amber, brown, golden yellow, pale gold, or other. Aged white wines wil have typically deeper yellows and golds. Red wines may be pink, orange, light red, tile red, brick red, ripe plum and many other descriptions. Aging will show orange and browns.

Smell

The smell of wine can be divided into its aroma, grape derived odors, and the bouquet, odors derived from the winemaking process. During the fermentation of the grape many chemical compounds are made which produce odors that can be recognized and described. The maturation of the wine in oak may also add to the smell of the wine through vanilla, caramel and creamy type smells. The list of perceived smells is endless and unfortunately not are all pleasant.

Taste

Of the four primary tastes three are predominant in wine tasting: sweetness, acidity and bitterness. Associated with the sense of taste is the feeling produced in the mouth. Alcohol in moderate concentrations can be perceived as sweet. High alcohol wines may produce a warm or hot sensation. Dissolved carbon dioxide can be felt as a fizz and astringent wines can cause dryness or puckering in the mouth, Wines high in glycerol appear viscous and give a fatter or thicker feel in the mouth. All of these sensations will lead to the overall mouth feel. A balanced wine is one where all the components flil the mouth with a uniform smooth enjoyable feeling. Balance is what the winemaker strives to achieve.

1.To appraise the wine, the glass should be clear and one third full.

2.Tilt the glass on a 45-degree angle away from you with a white background so the visual assessment can be made.

3.Swirl the wine in the glass several times so the volatile chemicals, those that give rise to the wine's aroma and bouquet, can collect in the glass.

4.Smell the wine with 2-3 full quick sniffs. If you continually sniff the wine the smells will become confused. Most people can only detect 3-4 different smells st one time.

5.Make a written or mental note of the smells and your assessment of the wine's aroma and bouqet.

6.Now take a generous mouthful, suck air through the wine, swirl it around the mouth so as to cover the mouth with the wine and swallow.

7.Predominant tastes and odors are best detected with the mouth empty. As the wine warms when swallowed vapors will rise up through to the nose, for further smell detection.

Eyeballing wine, swirling and sniffing and awishing ... it may look complicated or even snobbish, but the traditional wine-tasting technique is actually based on common sense. It's simply a way to pause for a moment, to stop and think, and to pay attention to the ways that wine impacts on all your senses, from sight and scent to taste, aftertaste, and the overall impression that the wine leaves behind after you've finished. Once you've made the conclusion for yourself, what's more fun than comparing your resulting opinions with your friends!


Wine Index

Wine Tasting