Learning about wines – How to taste wine

Because I love wine, I wanted to do a few blogs  focused on wines and wine tasting. I thought I would start with the basics of tasting wines. Plus it’s a good refresher for me as well.

By focusing on several important aspects in each wine tasting, you help to refine your palate, pick out subtle details, and really understand the wine. This helps take the experience of wine tasting from a simple consumption of a beverage to new heights of appreciation!

Wine appreciation, just like appreciating any art, requires experience to develop. The first time you taste a wine, you don’t notice all the details. Some of these subtleties get lost on the novice. Only after tasting many wines and analyzing them in depth can you start to see these subtleties, both the good and the bad, and to distinguish a good wine from a poor one and to distinguish a good wine from a truly great one. Therefore, knowing how to taste wine as you get started is critical to avoid missing anything.

But whether you like a wine or not, will come down to your own personal taste and preferences. Drink what you like and appreciate. Here are some steps in wine tasting that I found from Wine Tasting Guide that helps me get started and I refer to the steps before I go to some wine tastings. Take a look.

The Steps of Tasting Wine

Opening and Pouring Wine - Obviously, this is the first step. Whether using a waiter’s corkscrew, screwpull or other fancy cork puller, opening the bottle should be pretty basic. However, one mistake beginners make in pouring wine is pouring too much! Be sure to only pour about 1/4th of a glassful. You will need room to swirl and sniff the wine. If it is filled up to the top you won’t have room for either of these!

Wine Color and Appearance - The next step in assessing a wine is simply looking at the wine. While many people gloss over this step pretty quickly, it can be useful. Note the overall color, the depth or opacity of color, the clarity, and viscosity.

Wine Aroma or “the Nose” – After your initial impressions of the wine’s appearance, turn your attention to the aroma of the wine, what wine geeks call the wine’s “nose”. Swirling the wine will help to volatilize the wine so you can smell it better. Don’t be afraid to get your nose right in there. Take your time and try to come up with descriptors, ways of describing what you are smelling. Start by naming the fruit aromas you smell and move on to other aromas, earth, wood, smoke, etc. There are no right and wrong answers so take a shot at it. This is a subjective thing. Overall, do you like the aroma? Is it complex, meaning it has many nuances of, or is it simple, with only one primary aroma. Does it entice you to take a sip or does it turn you off? Are there strange “off” aromas like melted rubber, mold, wet dog or others?

Wine Flavor or “the Mouth” – Finally, after studying the appearance and nose, move on to take a small sip. Swirl the wine around in your mouth and suck in some air (this is important to do) to volatilize the wine and get more out of it. Pay attention to whether the wine has any sweetness or is it dry? Is it light bodied or a big, full bodied wine? Is it flat feeling or lively, tart or bitter? Are there noticeable tannins (the drying, astringent feeling you get in your mouth with bigger red wines or chewing on the skin of a grape or apple)? Is it bland or does it have intensity to the flavors? Is it simple or complex with layers of flavors? What is the feel of the wine in your mouth, clumsy and chunky or is it velvety and silky? Pay attention to the finish after you swallow or spit the wine, does it linger attractively on your palate or does the flavor die away quickly? Does it entice you to take another sip or does it leave a bad taste in your mouth? Finally, do you like it? Is the overall impression positive or negative?

That’s it! I hope this helps you get started tasting wine. Most of all have fun with it because that’s what drinking wine is all about!

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