 A Quick Guide to Tasting Wine
At a wine industry tasting a few weeks ago, I was standing at a table where a well-known California winemaker was pouring his latest wines. A woman walked up, got a sample of the Cabernet Sauvignon, swirled, tasted and spit (at professional tastings you don’t swallow; you’d be tipsy after a few wines if you did), and announced, “A fine wine. It’s dark and impenetrable in the glass. Nose has smoke, chocolate and leather. It tastes of mature red fruit with a bit of wet dog.” She then walked away, leaving me and the winemaker staring.
How did she smell and taste all those different scents and flavor elements in that ounce or so of liquid? Where did she come up with her descriptions? More to the point, how do you learn to taste wine and describe what you taste beyond “yuck” or “tastes good?”
Our tasting whiz clearly had been trained to taste. She looked at the wine, smelled it to discern scents, and held it in her mouth for several seconds to determine flavors. This approach is referred to as the Three S’s: See, Smell, Sip.
SEE
Pour the wine into a clear glass and hold it in front of a white background so that you can examine the color. The color of wine varies dramatically, even within the same grape type. White wines range from straw green to yellow to brown. Deeper color in a white wine usually indicates more flavor and age, although a brown wine may have gone bad. Red wines range from a pale red to a deep purple, usually getting lighter in color as they age.
SMELL
Most people believe that evaluation of a wine is based on tasting. But taste buds can perceive only sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami (texture, meatiness).
Smell is a major component of tasting. In fact, 70 to 75% of what we taste is due to our sense of smell. Without it you would be unable to detect the chocolate, leather or wet dog (a perfectly acceptable description and not an insult) in your Cabernet.
Pour a couple of ounces of wine into a glass and swirl it carefully. This releases flavor molecules in the wine allowing you to appreciate the aroma, also called the nose (or bouquet in an older wine). Put your nose into the glass and take a good long sniff. Does the wine smell fresh or are there off-odors? Do you perceive fruits, flowers, spices, petroleum?
SIP
To get the full taste of a wine, follow these three steps:
1. First Sip (first impression): This is where the wine awakens your taste buds.
2. Taste: Slosh the wine around in your mouth. Examine the heaviness (body) and texture of the wine. Is it light or rich? Smooth or harsh? Sweet or dry? Fruity or restrained? Take a moment to consider its flavor and balance.
The balance wine possesses is a critical aspect in defining its quality. Well-made wine should have an equal balance of acidity, sweetness (residual sugar), tannins (in reds) and alcohol. No one component should dominate.
One of the most confusing things for many people in describing a wine’s taste is the difference between “sweet,” “dry” and “fruity” wines. Most people use the term “sweet” to describe what actually are the fruit flavors of the wine. Dry and sweet are opposites, but we can taste only sweet. Dry is the absence of sweet. A wine’s sweetness comes from the amount of sugar left after fermentation stops (residual sugar). A dry wine has low amounts of residual sugar. In fact, most wines in a retail store or on a restaurant wine list are dry unless labeled as “dessert” or “after dinner” wines.
3. Aftertaste: This is the taste that remains in your mouth after you have swallowed the wine. Is it pleasant? How long did the taste last? Did it disappear quickly or linger on for several seconds?
Wine undergoes subtle changes from minute to minute once the bottle is opened. Some wines improve for hours after being opened, while others are better within the first hour. Air allows the aromas and flavors in a wine to develop, but it also ultimately destroys wine. Once a bottle is opened, it is only good for a few days.
Tips for Building Your Tasting Vocabulary
You can increase your wine vocabulary by studying smells. When you are at the supermarket or greenmarket, smell the fruits. Sniff the fresh herbs. Chances are you will notice one or more of the strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, melon, mint or herb notes the next time you taste a wine. Try sniffing your leather jacket and your dog when he is wet from being out in the rain. Notice the scent of the earth after a rainfall. Smell the flowers in a garden or a field.
When you are sniffing and tasting the wine, try a Proustian approach. What does the scent or taste remind you of: your mother’s perfume when you were very young? your first doll? Legos? your wet dog? the barn on your uncle’s farm? cotton candy? What was distinctive about the wine? Make a note of these associations. You are tasting for yourself, so how you describe your impressions is very personal.
A useful tool to see how wine professionals describe wines is the Wine Aroma Wheel. It was created by Dr. Ann C. Noble at the University of California Davis. It divides wine aromas into 12 distinct categories, such as “fruity,” “herbaceous,” “woody.” Each category is then broken down two more times into more specific descriptors. It can be ordered from www.winearomawheel.com ($6.75 including shipping).
You may want to keep a notebook of your impressions of each wine. Some wine tasters assign a point score to each wine or a word evaluation. Note if you want to buy it again. These written notes will be useful when you are deciding which wines to repurchase.
The more different wines you try, and the more attention you pay to each, the better you will become at defining and describing the wine's characteristics and your reactions. And the more you will appreciate wine.
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Patricia Savoie is a nationally-known wine writer living in New York City. She is completing her second book on wine and will be a regular contributor to this website.
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