The Taste of Wine

Beringer
Sparkling Zinfandel Rose

Concha y Toro
Maycas del Limari Reserva Sauvignon Blanc

When tasting a wine you should ignore always what you have heard in the way of comments from others. It is amazing how often one can be influenced by outside opinion. Taste the wine first, form your own thoughts, and then enjoy a discussion regarding the observations, smells and tastes you have experienced.

To fully appreciate what a wine has to offer the three senses of sight, smell and taste are used. In wine parlance they are known as “eye”, “nose” and “palate”.

The initial step in judging the appearance of a wine is to look at its clarity, as all wines should be perfectly clear. Small deposits may sometimes be evident, but they are harmless if settling, to give a bright and clear wine. If you have a wine that remains cloudy then it should be poured away.

Next you should swirl the wine carefully round the wine glass. What are often known as “legs” or “tears” can often be seen. These are an indication of alcohol content. The slower the “tears” move down the glass (more viscous) the greater the alcohol content.

Taking a good look at the colour of your wine will give clues as to its condition, origins, and age. The best way to make these observations is by holding the glass at the base of the stem, and tilted slightly away from you. For the most accurate results look at the wine against a white background, and ALWAYS in natural light (rather than artificial). Variations in colour can be quite dramatic. Reds vary from almost rose in colour to really dark, appearing almost black. Whites can range from water white to deep gold, although the majority are usually a light straw yellow colour.

All the viticultural factors and vinification techniques will influence the colour of a wine. Grape varieties, area of production, ripeness of fruit and the age of a wine are the largest contributors to colour variation. Dry, light bodied wines from cooler climates tend to be the lightest in colour, while the deepest will be found in full bodied wines from hotter areas of production. If your wine has brown tinges around the edge it is an indication of age, and is caused by a slow harmless oxidation process.

Interestingly, smelling a wine can reveal more about its nature than most other methods. For example, if a wine smells bad or off, the likelihood of it being healthy and well is almost nil! There is no mystery to “noseing” a wine.

The celebrity experts will often use exaggerated language to describe the aromas, but, like us all, they are really just calling on their in-built library of stored smells to recognise and compare. This helps them make quality and origin assessments. No smells are unique to wine; they can all be compared to something familiar. To smell a wine, quite simply give the glass a good swirl, put your nose into the glass and take a deep sniff.

More often than not the information gleaned from tasting a wine will confirm the impressions formulated from the nose. The process is simple: take a good mouthful and draw air into the mouth through the wine. This makes a somewhat strange noise, but is important to bring out the wine’s characteristics in the back of the throat.

On its own the tongue detects very little, but on its tip we can discover sweetness, acidity or sourness on the sides, and bitterness on the top and at the back. If saltiness is present it will be found on the front and sides of the tongue. Amazingly, apart from those already mentioned, we smell tastes rather than taste tastes. All drinks and foods emit odorous vapours in the mouth that find their way directly to the roof of our nasal passages, where they are analysed before ‘messages’ are transmitted back to our tasting experience.

In the end, and after sometimes exhaustive deliberations, it will be personal choice that determines whether a wine is liked or disliked. If faulty wines and poor quality wines are eliminated from the equation you might think that tasters would agree on a ranking list after tasting a range of wines. This is very rarely the case, and just demonstrates how each of us will display differing tolerance levels at which we enjoy/dislike our wines.

Explore the rich vein of wines available to you. Don’t be frightened to be decisive about your opinions, and discover which wines are your favourites. Most importantly, take the time to relax and enjoy a good bottle of wine.