Wine Tasting

We thought it might be interesting to look at the steps for tasting wines. There are many books written on this subject, and it is difficult to describe everything about wine tasting. It may help you to some degree and just let you know there is much more information on this subject if you are interested. Words describing a wine enable us to imagine what it would taste like before we try it for ourselves.

Wine tasting can be broken down into 5 steps:

Color, Swirl, Smell, Taste, and Savor.

Color - Color tells you a lot about the wine. For example, white wines gain color as they get older, while red wines lose color with age. Also, the different grape varieties result in different colors; for example, Chardonnay usually gives a deeper color than a Riesling. Also, different people have different perceptions of color. What might appear pale yellow to one could be gold to another.

Swirl - We swirl the wine before tasting to allow oxygen to get into it to yield the bouquet of the wine. In other words, swirling aerates the wine and gives you a better smell. This action causes friction and causes the wine's esters to evaporate. The esters carry the wine's aromas.

Smell - This is the most important part of the wine tasting. You only perceive four tastes, but can smell over 1,000 different scents. Smelling helps to identify certain characteristics. Your nose will tell you 75% of what you want to know about a wine. Most people find it difficult to describe what they smell in a wine.

Taste - To many people tasting means taking a sip and swallowing immediately; this isn't tasting. Tasting is using your taste buds. Different areas of your tongue are more sensitive to one taste than another. Sweetness is found on the tip of the tongue; therefore, if there is any sweetness in the wine, you'll find it first. Sweetness can occur in wine that has some residual sugar left over after the fermentation. Acidity (sourness) is found at the sides of the tongue, the cheek area and the back of the throat - most commonly present in white wines and some lighter-style red wines. The sensation of bitterness begins in the middle of the tongue to the back of the tongue (and cheeks). Bitterness in wine is usually created by high alcohol and high tannin. When the wines are too young they dry the palate to excess. If there is a lot of tannin in a wine it can actually coat your whole mouth. By taking a gulp of wine, you bypass all of these taste buds.

Savor - After you taste a wine, sit back and savor it and think about what you've tasted, and most importantly, did you like it?