Taste Wine Like A Pro
Wine tasting is neither the intimidating elitist exercise it’s been parodied as nor is it ultra-serious. In fact it’s loads of fun and almost always a discovery of tantalising flavours. Moreover it’s easy as pie so let’s get stuck into it. Wine Tasting unlike the literal translation doesn’t just involve sipping wine. Wine Tasting involves three key elements – see, nose, sip – in that precise order.
See – First Impressions Last
The wine colour says so much about it and that’s true for red and white both, not to forget the pink ones. Take your wine glass and tip it against white paper and the colour will reveal the wine’s age, style and weight. For instance, a white wine with a pale hue is rather young and fresh while a red wine with a sharp brick red core, betrays power and rich fruit but if the outer rim is turning brown, it could mean the red is past its prime. Similarly with sparkling wine, you want to check for thin ribbons of bubbles shooting up from bottom of the glass. It means the sparkling’s still got it!
Nose – It’s All In The Smell
Yes it is, for right or wrong, smelling the wine builds up an unconscious and unshakeable expectation of what the wine will taste like. So be sure to first and without shyness, stick your nose into the glass, further down the better. Now hold on, it’s a two-step thing. After the first nosing, give the wine a good swirl. The exercise has the dual benefit of ‘waking’ up the wine’s esters (chemical compounds) and oxidising them to stir up an enjoyable storm of aromas. Nose again and brace for a sensory experience dialled up to at least 90 on the scale.
Sip – The Final Frontier
And so we come to it. The reward for patiently going through the tasting process without knocking back the wine. And the rich reward for diligently eyeing and nosing the wine is almost always worth it. Having inferred quite a bit about the wine already, you’ve got some notion of what the wine will taste like. Maybe set them aside and keep an open mind, letting the wine glass land the ferment on the specific tip of the tongue where the upfront fruit crackles while the side of the tongue sense the wine’s acidity and the back absorbs the heat of alcohol and if it’s a red, some tannic bitterness. That’s how the wine feels, stretched across the palate and that’s how a wine tasting is done like a pro but with all the fun intact. Taste away.
