Wine tasting can be broken down into five basic steps: Color, Swirl, Smell, Taste, and Savor.

"There are no standards of taste in wine, cigars, poetry, prose, etc. Each ma's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard."

-MARK TWAIN, 1895

COLOR

Color tells you a lot about the wine. Since we start with the white wines, let's consider three reasons why a white wine may have more color:

1. It's older.
2. Different grape varieties give different color For example, Chardonnay usually gives off a deeper color than does Sauvignon Blanc.)
3. The wine was aged in wood.

 

If you can see through a red wine, it's generally ready to drink! As white wines age, they gain color. Red wines, on the other hand, lose color as they age.

 

 

SWIRL

Why do we swirl wine? To allow oxygen to get into the wine: Swirling releases the esters, ethers, and aldehydes that combine with oxygen to yield a wine's bouquet. In other words, swirling aerates the wine and releases more of the bouquet and aroma.

 

 

SMELL

This is the most important part of wine tasting. You can perceive just four tastes-sweet, sour, bitter, and salt-but the average person can identify more than two thousand different scents, and wine has more than two hundred of its own. Now that you've swirled the wine and released the bouquet, I want you to smell the wine at least three times. You will find that the third smell will give you more information than the first smell did.

 

 

TASTE

To many people, tasting wine means taking a sip and swallowing immediately. To me, this isn't tasting. Tasting is something you do with your taste buds. You have taste buds all over your mouth-on both sides of the tongue, underneath, on the tip, and extending to the back of your throat. If you do what many people do, you take a gulp of wine and bypass all of those important taste buds. When I taste wine I leave it in my mouth for three to five seconds before swallowing.

 

 

What should you think about when tasting wine?

Be aware of the most important sensations of taste and your own personal thresholds to those tastes. Also, pay attention to where they occur on your tongue and in your moth. As I mentioned earlier, you can perceive just four tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salt (but there's no salt in wine, so we're down to three). Bitterness in wine is usually created by high alcohol and high tannin. Sweetness occurs only in wines that have some residual sugar left over after fermentation. Sour (sometimes called "tart") indicates the acidity in wine.

 

Sweetness:  The highest threshold is on the tip of the tongue. If there's any sweetness in a wine whatsoever, you'll get it right away.

Acidity: Found at the sides of the tongue, the cheek area, and the back of the throat. White wines and some lighter-style red wines usually contain a higher degree of acidity.

Bitterness: Tasted in the back of the tongue.

Tannin: The sensation of tannin begins in the middle of the tongue. Tannin frequently exists in red wines or white wines aged in wood. When the wines are too young, tannin dries the palate to excess. If there's a lot of tannin in the wine, it can actually coat your whole mouth, blocking the fruit. Remember, tannin is not a taste: It is a tactile sensation.

Fruit and varietal characteristics: These are not tastes, but smells. The weight of the fruit (the "body") will be felt in the middle of the tongue.

Aftertaste: The overall taste and balance of the components of the wine that lingers in your mouth. How long does the balance last? Usually a sign of a high-quality wine is a long, pleasing aftertaste. The taste of many of the great wines lasts anywhere from one to three minutes, with all their components in harmony.

 

 

SAVOR

After you've had a chance to taste the wine, sit back for a few moments and savor it. Think about what you just experienced, and ask yourself the following questions to help focus your impressions. Was the wine light, medium, or full-bodied?

 

• For a white wine: How was the acidity? Very little, just right, or too much?
• For a red wine: Is the tannin in the wine too strong or astringent? Does it blend with the fruit or overpower it?
• What is the strongest component (residual sugar, fruit, acid, tannin)?
• How long did the balance of the components last? (Ten seconds, sixty seconds, etc.)
• Is the wine ready to drink? Or does it need more time to age? Or is it past its prime?
• What kind of food would you enjoy with the wine?
• To your taste, is the wine worth the price?
• This brings us to the most important point. The first thing you should consider after you've tasted a wine is whether or not you like it. Is it your style?

You can compare tasting wine to browsing in an art gallery. You wander from room to room looking at the paintings. Your first impression tells whether or not you like something. Once you decide you like a piece of art, you want to know more: Who was the artist? What is the history behind the work? How was it done? And so it is with wine. Usually, once oenophiles (wine aficionados) discover a wine that they like, they want to learn everything about it: the winemaker; the grapes; exactly where the vines were planted; the blend, if any; and the history behind the wine.

 

 

The 60-Second Wine Expert

Over the last few years I have insisted that my students spend one minute in silence after they swallow the wine. I use a "60-second wine expert" tasting sheet in my classes for students to record their impressions. The minute is divided into four sections: 0 to 15 seconds, 15 to 30 seconds, 30 to 45 seconds, and the final 45 to 60 seconds. Try this with your next glass of wine.

Please note that the first taste of wine is a shock to your taste buds. This is due to the alcohol content and acidity of wine. The higher the alcohol or acidity, the more of a shock. For the first wine in any tasting, it is probably best to take a sip and swirl it around in your mouth, but don't evaluate it. Wait another thirty seconds, try it again and then begin the sixty-second wine expert.

0 to 15 seconds: If there is any residual sugar/sweetness in the wine, I will experience it now. If there is no sweetness in the wine, the acidity is usually at its strongest sensation in the first fifteen seconds. I am also looking for the fruit level of the wine and its balance with the acidity or sweetness.

15 to 30 seconds: After the sweetness of acidity, I am looking for great fruit sensation. After all, that is what I am paying for! By the time I reach thirty-seconds, I am hoping for balance of all the components. By this time, I can identify the weight of the wine. Is it light, medium, or full-bodied? I am now starting to think about what kind of food I can pair with this wine.

30 to 45 seconds: At this point I am beginning to formulate my opinion of the wine, whether I like it or not. Not all wines need sixty seconds of thought. Lighter-style wines, such as Rieslings, will usually show their best at this point. The fruit, acid, and sweetness of a great German Riesling should be in perfect harmony from this point on. For quality red and white wines, acidity-which is a very strong component (especially in the first thirty seconds) ---should now be in balance with the fruit of the wine.

45 to 60 seconds: Very often wine writers use the term "length" to describe how long the components, balance, and flavor continue in the mouth. I concentrate on the length of the wine in these last fifteen seconds. In big, full-bodied red wines from Bordeaux and the Rhône Valley, Cabernets from California, Barolos and Barbarescos from Italy, and even some full-bodied Chardonnays, I am concentrating on the level of tannin in the wine. Just as the acidity and fruit balance are my major concerns in the first thirty seconds. If the fruit, tannin, and acid are all in balance at sixty seconds, then I feel that the wine is probably ready to drink. Does the tannin overpower the fruit? If it does at the sixty-second mark, I will then begin to question whether I should drink the wine now or put it away for more aging.

It is extremely important to me that if you want to learn the true taste of the wine, you take at least one minute to concentrate on all of its components. In my classes it is amazing to see more than a hundred students silently taking one minute to analyze a wine. Some close their eyes, some bow their heads in deep thought, others write notes.
One final point: Sixty seconds to me is the minimum time to wait before making a decision about a wine. Many great wines continue to show balance well past 120 seconds. The best wine I ever tasted lasted more than three minutes---that's three minutes of perfect balance of all components!

**Any information shown above has been taken from Kevin Zraly's 20th Anniversary Edition of "WINDOWS ON THE WORLD, Complete Wine Course".

 

 

 

DECIDING TO DECANT

A good set of rules is to decant a vigorous wine that is not more than twenty years old when there is a sediment to remove or a beautiful decanter to enjoy aesthetically, and otherwise not to get too exercised about the whole business. When I'm entertaining I tend to decant wines with a sediment just before guests arrive for entirely practical reasons-although if the wine is very old and delicate, say more than twenty years old, I would decant only just before serving. If once the wine has been poured, it is obvious that it is a bit "tight" and would benefit from aeration, simply swirl it around in the glass, which will be even more effective than the decanting process.

 

 

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

Very much an optional exercise, this, but one you can save for a rainy day when you feel like making a major contribution to what we know about wine and air. You'll need to open up a fair amount of wine, so it might make sense to try it out on a day when you will be entertaining in the evening. Choose any wine(s) you like, as many as you can afford, but even one will do. It would make sense to select a wine you normally would consider decanting-perhaps a very cheap red and a more expensive youthful one. You will need three bottles of each, I'm afraid. Open a bottle three hours before you plan to do your tasting and decant it into a decanter or a clean, empty wine bottle. Open the second bottle one hour before serving and simply let it "breathe." Open the third just before you begin the tasting. Now taste a glass from each bottle, served to you blind by your longsuffering, kind-hearted accomplice. See if you can notice any difference between the effect of the three different preserving treatments. This experiment is open to endless variation: with different wines, different lengths of time before tasting, and different sorts of "decanter" (something with a wide mouth, such as a glass jug, would expose the wine to more air than a narrow-necked vessel).

**Taken from Jancis Robinson's "How to Taste, A Guide to Enjoying Wine".

 

 

Test this is a test

 

Test