Ideal
Conditions for Tasting Wines
Winemakers usually taste wines in the winery
laboratory. Ideally, the laboratory has white benches, standard
sized XL5 tasting glasses and a south facing window with diffuse
sunlight. Wines are always tasted at room temperature. In the real
world, however, such ideal conditions rarely exist for tasting
wines. Wines are usually tasted at the dinner table, at restaurants
or even at the counter of a wine merchant’s shop – none of which are
usually ideal.
Time of Day
Tests show that our senses are at their best
around mid-morning. Most professional wine tastings, then, occur
around this time. For the rest of us, however, mid-morning is not
the usual time for drinking wine – indeed, in some quarters,
drinking before midday is frowned upon.
Most wine drinking is done during meals –
usually lunchtime and dinnertime. Of those two times, people are
usually most interested in drinking wine at dinnertime.
So if you are considering doing a wine tasting
with some formality – even amongst friends – when should you do it?
Well, one suggestion is late on a Sunday morning. This means most
people are not at work and have the fewest distractions on a
Sunday. If you do want to taste wines during the week, and evenings
are the only time available, try to do it earlier in the evening
rather than later. You should also try to do it before a meal, as
eating a large meal can dull the senses so necessary to appreciate
fine wine.
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An Exercise
Next time you are on holiday or you have
a day to yourself, open a bottle of wine and try drinking a
glass at different times of the day. Make notes of your
impression of the wine each time. Notice how the same wine will
taste different depending on what time of day it is and whether
you have just eaten or not.
This experiment usually reveals that
most people are at their most perceptive around mid-morning.
What did your notes indicate about your own tasting times?
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The Wine Drinking Environment
To judge a wine’s colour and clarity, you need
some quite strong, diffuse, white light and white backgrounds
against which to hold the glass. Diffuse sunlight from a south
facing window (in the southern hemisphere – north facing in the
northern hemisphere) is best. Wine tasting is also best done
indoors where there is no air movement to waft away the aromas of
the wine.
Whether you do your tasting sitting or standing
is a matter of preference. It doesn’t really make much difference.
Candle light is a disaster for wine tasting.
It looks romantic, but basically you can’t see anything.
Candlelight: romantic – but not good for proper wine tasting
The tasting table should have a white table
cloth, or at least white plates. This is so that there is a white
background against which to hold the wines and judge the colour.
If your kitchen has a white work bench, then
this might be a good place for wine tasting. The sink will be close
by and this will be handy for tipping the finished wines.
An Exercise: The
Ideal Home Wine Tasting
Choose somewhere
with soft light – preferably a south facing window if you are having
your tasting during the day. Have plenty of white surfaces – either
a table cloth or white plates or even sheets of white cardboard.
Lay some
newspaper under the table cloth so that spilt wine doesn’t spoil
your table.
A note for
women: don’t wear perfume or fragrances – the other people at the
tasting will not be able to smell the wine properly.
Smells and Fragrances
The difference in the aromas from two different
glasses of the same variety is often quite subtle. That is why a
good wine tasting environment is completely neutral in ambient
odours. The smell of coffee, or food cooking, or even someone
else’s perfume or after shave is a great distraction and often masks
the aromas that you are setting out to isolate.
Thus the tasting room should be away from
coffee or food preparation and should not contain flowers.
Sometimes even heavy smokers are off-putting when standing close
by.
Other Distractions
Ever eaten an orange just after cleaning your
teeth? Awful, isn’t it? Cleaning your teeth just prior to a wine
tasting can have similar disastrous effects. Other offending
foodstuffs and drinks are:
- Chewing gum or sweets,
- Chocolate,
- Acetic salad dressings, and
- Tea.
To get rid of these extraneous tastes before
tasting wine, try chewing bread and also swirling wine around in
your mouth till the other flavours have gone. |
