Five Tips When Tasting Wine
by Cole Swanson
August, 17, 2024
As far as tasting wine goes, it is assumed you must be a professional taster to know a good wine from a bad one. But, that thought process is limiting and misguided, because most everyone’s palates are different, and our cultures and foods we eat may differ as well. All of these impact our sensitivities to sweetness, savoriness, saltiness, and enjoyability. Even our perception of the aforementioned flavor descriptions may differ from one another.
When tasting a rosé, you may think it’s sweeter from your friend, possibly because you don’t eat as many sweeter foods as they. You may taste freshly-picked raspberries, while your friend may not, simply because you’ve been berry picking before while they haven’t.
Not only is the notion of one wine being objectively better than another misleading, it can cause wine tasters, especially new ones, to feel belittled. If you like the wine you’re drinking, it’s good wine. Case closed. And when a server at a tasting room asks why you like the wine you’re tasting, you don’t need to be afraid about your limited wine jargon. Responding with “it’s good,” or, “it’s yummy,” is just fine.
Tasting the nuances of wine is a practice for most people. I wouldn’t say anyone is born a prodigy of the senses. I myself tasted only bitter grapes when I began my wine career. Now, I can say my senses lean toward pretentious.
If you want to forgo caring about speaking the verbiage of a professional taster, go for it. Keep enjoying wine exactly as you are. If you want to learn a bit more about how to taste like a professional, all you need is a simple guide (like we have below) and plenty of practice, which just means drinking more wine.
LOOK, SNIFF, SIP, TASTE, EVALUATE
LOOK
Before you sip, and hopefully enjoy, your wine, it’s important to observe the color, depth, and clarity of what’s in your glass. Red wines range from purple to amber as they age, while whites range from lemon to amber. By looking at the color, you can predict the age, which can possibly give you an understanding of the aromas and flavors. Assessing depth allows for understanding the type of grape.
For example, if the wine is a deep red color, the grape(s) used may be from thick-skinned fruit like Cabernet Sauvignon, while a lighter red color, may be the result of a thin-skinned grape like Pinot Noir.
SNIFF
Testing aromas can provide insight into the complexities in the glass, also known as the amount of primary, secondary, and tertiary characteristics.
Generally speaking, primary characteristics come from the grape’s natural flavors when picked. These are typically the fruity sensations one may perceive, as well as others – cranberry, blackberry, cherry, thyme, dill, florality.
Secondary characteristics are the result of the winemaking process, and add more layers of complexity to the wine. This includes yeast strains utilized during fermentation, the types of barrel and treatment of the barrel when aging wines, or not aging wines in a barrel at all (some wines are aged in stainless steel tanks before bottling. This restricts oxygen from coming into contact with the wine, while barrels allow for oxygenation). Secondary characteristics can also include flavors derived from malolactic conversion, a technique used to soften acids and provide creamier characteristics; many red wines and all buttery chardonnays go through this process.
Tertiary flavors are the result of the length of bottle aging. As wine ages, not only will its color develop (reds become lighter and whites become darker), but so will the flavors. If when sniffing the wine you perceive many different aromas, over time those will evolve and other aromas may appear as well, which may not have been there before.
SIP
I differentiate “sip” and “taste” because, though they are similar, sipping allows you to evaluate more than just taste.
The structure of a wine is determined by its levels of sweetness, acidity, tannins (in reds only), alcohol, and body.
Acidity can be noted by how much your mouth salivates.
Tannins are the antithesis of acidity, as they dry your mouth. If you’ve ever sipped a red wine and feel a grippy sensation on your teeth, lips or tongue, that is the result of tannins, which derive from the skins of grapes.
Alcohol can be noted by a sharp sensation in the back of the throat or a prickliness on your tongue or in your nose.
Body, or weight, is a tricker evaluation because it is determined by all four previous levels, and can take much practice. However, tannins and acidity are the most significant factors when estimating. Because acidity and tannins contrast one another, if your mouth salivates heavily, but you simultaneously feel a lot of grippiness, that means a wine is likely full-bodied because the tannins are still shining through. Alcohol also adds to the body as well. The more alcohol, the fuller the wine feels.
Examples of lighter-bodied wines: unoaked Chardonnays, many Pinot Noirs, Gamay (a red grape from France), many Sauvignon Blancs.
Examples of fuller-bodied wines: most any Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah (especially from Washington state and Australia – AKA Shiraz), Merlot.
TASTE
Now we taste. Compare what you sniffed to what you taste. Do you get the same flavors or different ones? Are there more or less? Are they mostly primary (fruity and bright) or secondary and tertiary (developed fruit, such as dried or cooked fruit, as well as others, such as smokiness, meatiness, earthiness)? How complex is the wine?
EVALUATE
This is when you take all of that information above and determine the quality of the wine. Professionals use an objective scale to determine if the wine is ready to drink, but can still age, or if it is ready to drink and should not be aged longer, or if the wine is past its prime. However, and most importantly, I suggest evaluating wine based on if you would drink a glass of it or not. At the end of the day, wine is meant to be enjoyed, and so I’d say “delicious” is a key determination when evaluating.