Wine Tasting (Notes on how to)

Wine Tasting


A wine may be tasted to determine the type of wine, to appraise its quality, to determine its blend, to detect origin, or in comparison with different wines. You can also just taste wine for pleasure. The most difficult part is the ability to describe the sensations and impressions in clear terms. Different types of wine are not judged by the same standards (such as merlot and chardonnay); thus, the difficulty lies in appraising each wine within its own category.

1. Sight
A wine's viscosity or "legs," which run down the sides of the glass when it is swirled. The more slow moving the legs, the denser the flavor. So if a red wine is pale to brickish and has slow moving legs you can expect it to be mature. Holding the glass by the stem, tilt and observe it from several angles with a white background, such as table linen, and examine the clarity and color.

Clarity: Most wines should be brilliant and clear as opposed to cloudy or hazy. Unless the winemaker purposely left the wine unfiltered to create a certain flavor or stylistic difference.

Color: The intensity and shade is referred as the “robe”, we say a wine is ruby, garnet, or purplish, as red wines age they fade, going from deep purple to, eventually, a brick color,. Intense color generally signifies good quality whereas browning indicates the wine is oxidized or over its peak. The color intensity of a red wine is an indication of the “body”, while the hue shows its age. The color of white wines shows its state of oxidation, white wines grow darker.

2. Smell
Swirl the wine in the glass, smell and identify the components in the aroma and bouquet of the wine recalling aromas that you have experienced before. Certain types of wine may be judged almost entirely on their odor. The sensation received when the wine is in the mouth is not solely belong to the sense of taste, as we smell by way of the retronasel canal this is the mouth aroma.

Aroma: Smells that originate from the grape itself, especially when young.

Bouquet: Smells created by the winemaking, which occur after fermentation and barrel-aging.

3. Taste
Take a sip of the wine, draw air in over your palate and swallow, noting the effect and flavor of the wine in all areas of your mouth. Note the characteristics of the wine at the tip of your tongue, the middle, the sides, and the back flavors. At the tip of the tongue, we detect sweetness, sourness on the sides and underneath, salt on the edges, and bitterness at the back of the tongue when swallowing. Wine contains these four basic tastes sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. Of the four tastes, the sweet is the only agreeable one, as the others in their pure state are unpleasant, unless they are compensated by sweet tastes. Sweet comes from the alcohol and its sugars, sour taste comes from the free organic acids, salt taste comes from salts, and the bitter taste comes from the tannins. A fine wine well have balance from front to back with all flavors in harmony without any surprises.

Flavor: Flavor involves your sensory impressions of taste and smell picked up in "aroma" on your palate and nasal passages.

Palate: The sensory impressions that are detected on the palate include acid, alcohol, sweetness, bitterness and astringency.

4. Touch
Besides the flavor impressions, the wine feel on the palate will give you the impressions of temperature, consistency, viscosity, and volume.

Body: The mouthfeel of a wine. Body can be light, medium or full.

Finish: The aftertaste of a wine. Common descriptors include long, short, clean, tart, tannic and many more.

5. Overall
The overall impression of a wine is the combination of all the above senses. To determine whether your final impression of the wine is balanced or not.