How to Taste: Step One Sight
Tasting wine involves three steps: looking at
the wine, smelling the wine and tasting it. The Australian wine
show judging system awards three points out of twenty for colour,
seven points out of twenty for aroma or smell and the final ten
points for taste. So although looking at a wine is the first thing
that you do, it is not the most important thing from a tasting point
of view.
The thing that you are doing first is holding
up the glass looking for any obvious faults. For example, a three
year old red wine should not be brown in colour this would suggest
advanced oxidation. Similarly, a young white wine should not be a
golden colour or a brown colour.
Deposits in Wine
Sometimes your first sight of a wine will pick
out some particles in it. The particles could be pieces of cork and
these are harmless. White crystals in white wine and dark purple
crystals in red wine are also harmless. These crystals are simply
tartrates crystals of tartaric acid. Although the white crystals
in white wine can look suspiciously like glass fragments, if the lip
of the bottle is intact, the crystals are not likely to be glass.
These days, winemakers put wines through
processes called stability trials to stabilize the wines at warm and
cold temperatures so that they dont throw a crystal. Cold
stabilization freezes out the crystals and filtering removes other
tartrates.
Some producers, however, do not overly filter
the wines on the basis that excessive filtration not only removes
harmless deposits, but strips away flavour in the wine. Usually
they will put a note on the back label saying, This wine underwent
minimal filtration and may throw a harmless crust. Often, wine
lovers prefer this minimal treatment as they believe that they are
getting more flavour and they are quite happy to decant the wine
prior to serving to remove the tartrates.
What to Look For in a Wine
A good wine should provide complexity and
interest. That complexity and interest should be apparent at all
stages of the wine tasting process including visual inspection.
Thus, you are looking for a wine that has some variation between the
centre of the glass and the rim. A young white should be a pale
straw in colour with a faint green tinge around the rim. A young
red should be a rich crimson with a faint purple tinge around the
rim. The older a wine is, the more difference you will see between
the centre of the glass and the lighter colour of the rim.
In essence, you are looking for a wine that is
interesting in colour. If the wine is dull and the same colour from
the centre of the glass out to the rim, then the odds are that it is
not a very interesting wine.
How to Visually Inspect a Wine
Fill the glass to less than half full. Hold it
against a white background and make sure that you have clean,
diffuse white light. In laboratories in wineries, for example,
winemakers prefer a south facing window for diffuse sunlight and a
white bench for assessing the colour of wines.
Candlelight is not much help in looking at a
wine the light is too weak and a little yellow in colour.
How to Tell the Age of Wine Just by Looking
The rule of thumb is this:
(a)
Red wines go from purple to crimson to brick red as they
age. When they are really old, they turn brown.
(b)
White wines go from an almost clear colour to straw to yellow
as they age. When they are really old, they also turn brown.
The trick is to look at the rim of the wine in
the glass. This is particularly so when you are looking at deeply
coloured red wines that might appear almost inky everywhere except
at the rim.
Red Wines
Young reds often show a purple or even blue hue
around the edges. Slight orange or brick red colours around the
edges suggests age. The older the wine, the more gradations of
colour you will see from the edge of the rim into the bowl of the
glass.
White Wines
There is less of a range of colours in white
wines. Most whites go from a pale straw in their youth to a pale
gold, then a deeper yellow as they age.
The Red Colour Chart
There are some colours in a glass of wine that
will help you identify the age of the wine, or even the variety.
Here are some examples:
Purple
This indicates a young, good quality wine that
is capable of ageing. Look for a purple tinge around the rim.
Cherry
This often indicates a light to medium bodied
wine, or a pinot noir, grenache, light to medium bodied merlot, or a
red from a cool climate area (Mornington, New Zealand).
Crimson
This is a fairly typical red wine colour, so it
is not that useful in telling a variety, but it does indicate a
fairly youthful red.
Mulberry
A deep mulberry colour could indicate a shiraz
or nebbiolo.
Brick Red
Most reds tend to turn to brick red in colour
as they mature. This is often the case with Australian reds.
Significantly, a mature red may not be an old red. Some wines may
be mature at five years old others at 15 or 20 years old.
The White Colour Chart
Pale to Almost Colourless
Possibly a chenin blanc, young semillon, or an
inexpensive commercial wine.
Greenish Tinge
A pale straw colour with a greenish tinge
around the edge is often a youthful Australian white.
Pale Straw
A standard colour for most young whites
Yellow Gold
This can indicate an older wine, or a wine with
residual sugar. Young chardonnays from Australia have this colour.
Other wines with this colour include traminer, semillon and viogner.
Deep Gold
Older whites and sweet wines. |
