The Four Steps in Wine Tasting Technique
Ever wondered how
winemakers and professional wine tasters actually go about tasting
their wines? Well, here are the four steps that they go through.
Use these steps as your framework for the next time you taste a
wine.
1.
Look at the Wine
In Australia, wine judges
award a wine a maximum of 20 points based on the following:
- Colour: 3 points.
- Aroma: 7 points.
- Taste: 10 points.
The interesting thing is
that 10 of the maximum 20 points are for things other than what the
wine actually tastes like!
Therefore, the first step
in tasting a wine like a professional is to look at the wine. But
what are you looking for?
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First, you are
looking to see that the wine has no obvious faults. That is,
the wine is not cloudy or fizzy and that there are no solid
elements floating around in it.
Secondly, you are looking to see that it is
the right colour for the type of wine it is and its age.
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- For example, a young white (1-3 years
old) should usually be a pale straw colour with a tinge of green
around the rim to indicate its youthfulness. As a white gets
older, it takes on a yellowier colour. Later, it turns golden and
finally, when it is old, it turns brown.
- A red wine is usually a deep crimson with
a purple tinge to indicate its youthfulness, then it takes on a
brick red colour, then finally it also turns to brown when really
old.
Therefore, if you looked
at a young chardonnay and it was already a deep gold colour, the
wine is probably more developed than it should be at that stage of
its life. Similarly, if you looked at a young shiraz (1-4 years
old) and it was a brick red, then it also is more developed than it
should be at that stage of its life.
Yes, there are exceptions,
but these are the general rules of thumb.
Thirdly, you are looking
to see how dense the colour of the wine is. A young semillon can be
almost water white and there is usually nothing wrong with that, it
is just “interesting” to note at this stage of the tasting.
You just file this away and reserve judgment until you have actually
finished going through all the steps.
If a young cabernet
sauvignon were translucent rather than opaque, this would indicate
that it would probably be a light-bodied wine…. or it might simply
lack colour and extraction. Again, you will have to bear this in
mind when you taste it.
As a rule, however, most
wines in Australia are so well made that you would usually give them
three out of three for colour. So if you are ever stuck with a
group of winemakers and you don’t know what to say, try saying,
“Well, you’ve got to give it three out of three for colour!”
To determine the colour of
the wine, go through these steps:
- Tilt the glass at 45 degrees and hold it
away from you.
- Hold it against a white background.
- Look at the intensity of the hue of the
wine by looking at it directly from above.
2. On the Nose
For some odd reason,
winemakers do not “smell” a wine. They “nose” it.
Who knows why? It is one of the many odd phrases that winemakers
have. For example, they never “try” a wine or “drink”
a wine. They always “look” at it. So one winemaker might
say to another, “I looked at your Chardonnay the other day… not
bad at all!”
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The simplest way to “nose” a wine is to
just lift up the glass and smell it. You may have noticed the
odd habit that winemakers have of swirling a glass of wine
inside the glass. They do this to excite the molecules on the
surface of the wine so that more molecules float off and are
available to smell. You can swirl the wine with the base of the
glass on the table, or you can swirl it in the air – it does not
matter. |
You should hold the glass
by the stem when you do this. Some winemakers hold the wine further
down by the base, but there is no difference between the two
techniques – it is just a matter of preference.
To “nose” the wine, go
through these steps:
- Tilt the glass at 45 degrees towards
you. This gives the maximum surface area of wine and therefore
the maximum amount of volatile compounds will float off the
surface and be available to smell.
- Put your nose just over the top of the
glass so that you will be able to smell those volatile compounds.
- Take one short sniff.
- Try shutting your eyes at this point.
Some winemakers swear this helps them concentrate on the wine.
This is purely a personal preference.
- Ask yourself, “Is this wine clean?”
That is, make sure it does not smell like wet Hessian (corked
wine), or vinegar (volatile wine), or rotten eggs (hydrogen
sulphide), or sulphur (too much sulphur dioxide at bottling).
- Next, ask yourself, “Is the smell of
this wine typical of the variety?” Now this question involves
actually knowing what each variety should smell like! There are,
however, one or two key indicators for each variety. Chardonnay,
for example, often smells like melons or peaches. If it smells
like fruit salad, then it probably does not have the typical
chardonnay characters one would ordinarily look for. That is not
to say the wine is bad (at least, not this early in the tasting),
it is just different to many others of that variety, and so you
are on guard when it comes to the tasting.
3. Taste the Wine
Finally, you can drink the
thing! Two things are now going to happen. First, you will get
some impression of the sweetness, acidity, tannin and body of the
wine via the tongue. The rest of the taste sensation comes from the
aroma of the wine in the nose.
Take a generous mouthful
and hold it in your mouth for a few seconds. Then swallow it or
spit it out. Okay, only spit it out if you are in a wine tasting
session, do not do it if you are in a restaurant or a guest in
someone’s house!
Now when tasting,
winemakers have another trick that helps them uncover the nuances of
the wine more easily. This one takes a little practice!
Take the wine in your
mouth, and then tilt your head downwards. Now open your lips
slightly and at the same time, draw air in through your mouth so
that the wine is aerated (and so that the wine does not fall out of
your mouth!) This again makes the volatile compounds in the wine
float up and make its way into the olfactory passages of the nose.
This makes a slurping, gurgling sound; so again, check the
appropriateness of this technique. Basically, “okay” at
professional wine tasting, “not okay” at dinner with the
Queen.
Weigh up the flavour
components while the wine is in your mouth. Notice the length of
the flavour and the “persistence of flavour” – how long you
can taste the wine after you have swallowed it. The longer you can
taste it after you have swallowed it, the better the wine (assuming,
of course, that the flavour was an enjoyable one!)
4.
Weigh it All Up
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This technique ensures
that you go through all the processes necessary to judge a wine
and you do them in the order that is designed to maximize the
receptiveness of your senses of sight, smell and taste.
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- By looking at the wine first, you are
concentrating all your attention on the appearance of the wine.
- By nosing it, you are giving this crucial
aspect of the wine’s character all the attention it deserves
without the distraction of its flavours.
- By tasting it last, you already have the
finer nuances of the wine’s aromas in your mind before going
through the coarser receptors of the tongue.
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