The Wine Tasting Method

Learning to taste wine teaches us to slow down

The wine tasting method is a simple process that will help you identify specific features in wine while tasting it. It works by splitting up a wine tasting up into 4 sections. This technique will give you a practical application of tasting that can be used for any food or beverage.

Grab a glass of wine and follow along with the video above.

Look

Your eyes will help you size up a wine before you even sniff it. Here’s what to do:

1. Hue and Intensity: Identify the wine’s color as a point of reference. See the wine color chart for a complete list of hues.
2. Tears/Legs: When you swirl wine you will see tears develop on the sides of the glass. is is a phenomenon called the Gibbs-Marangoni Effect and it indicates the presence of alcohol in the wine. Increased tearing is an indication of a higher alcohol level.

Smell

There are hundreds of aroma compounds found in wine. As we learn to smell wine, we become more adept at identifying and isolating these aromas. Try to identify the smells to get a clear impression of the wine before you taste it.

1. Intensity: Position the glass just below your nose and take a quick, light whiff to judge the intensity. If the wine is highly aromatic, you will be able to smell it quite distinctly. Now position the glass where it’s most optimal for you to smell individual aromas (usually by pulling it back a bit).
2. Fruit: If you’re having trouble identifying aromas besides a strong “vinous” note, try holding the glass farther away from your nose. Identify the type of fruit and also the condition of the fruit. So if it’s strawberry, is it fresh, ripe or dried? A good goal to set is to attempt to identify 3 fruit aromas before moving on to other smells.
3. Herb/Other: Note all the other aromas you smell in a wine that are non-fruit flavors. You’ll notice some wines are distinctly more savory with more notes of herbs, flowers and even minerals. By the way, no answer is wrong, notes in this category can include things like black pepper, espresso, balsamic, petroleum and beeswax.
4. Oak: If the wine has aromas of vanilla, coconut, allspice, chocolate, cola and cedar or cigar, it’s likely to have been aged in oak barrels. Aging wine in oak causes some flavor compounds from the barrel to transfer into the wine. Different species of oak affect flavors differently. For example, American oak (Quercus alba) tends to add more dill and coconut aromas whereas, European oak (Quercus petrea) tends to add more vanilla, nutmeg, and allspice aromas.
5. Earth: When you taste earthiness, note whether it tastes organic (loam, forest soil, mushroom) or inorganic (slate, chalk, rocks, dried clay). These aromas, while still unexplained scientifically, offer more clues to where the grapes were grown. For example, wines from Burgundy and Champagne often have a subtle, organic, mushroom aromas. A lack of earthy aromas also helps identify a wine’s origin.

Taste

When you taste a wine, you’ll switch your focus from flavors to how the wine feels on your palate (in your mouth). Make sure you swish it around in your mouth to get the full effect before swallowing.

1. Sweetness: Sweetness in wine is primarily from grape sugars leftover after the fermentation and is referred to as residual sugar (RS). Of course, our human perception of residual sugar in wine is affected by the other characteristics in the wine, particularly acidity. Sweetness is less perceivable in wines with higher acidity. See the sweetness levels in wine.
2. Tannin: (for red wines) Tannin is a polyphenol (antioxidant) found mostly in red wine. Tannin tastes astringent and gives a drying sensation felt on your tongue. High tannin wines will grip the insides of your lips to your teeth. Tannins can taste bitter, but mostly, they are astringent and can be described like sandpaper: fine, medium, gritty or grippy.
3. Acidity: Acidity is the level of sourness in wine. Acidity makes your mouth water. Low acid wines generally taste round or even flabby and high acid wines taste lighter in body and very tart. Understand how acidic wine is compared to over beverages.
4. Alcohol: Alcohol is felt in your throat as a warming sensation. With practice, some tasters can estimate the alcohol level within a 10th of a percent. Alcohol adds to the overall body of wine.
5. Overall Body: All the traits above come together to give you a sense of the wine’s body which is essentially how bold it tastes in your mouth. Ask yourself if the wine is light-, medium-, or full-bodied.
6. Additional Flavors: Are their any flavors you can identify while tasting the wine that you didn’t get in the smell? Take note!

Conclusion

After you’ve tasted the wine, now you have the opportunity to consider the wine’s quality. Here are some of the questions to ask yourself:

1. Is the wine in balance? This is a question referencing the notes you made in the tasting section. Wines that are “in balance” have tastes that are balanced between one-another including acidity, tannin (if it’s a red) and alcohol level. While different wines have different intensities, a quality wine will be in balance with itself.
2. Is the wine complex? If you have a great deal of tasting notes for this wine and can still think of more, you’ve got a pretty complex wine on your hands.
3. What is your opinion? Now that you’ve properly assessed the wine, what do you think of it overall? We use a very simple 3-point system for this assessment (ew, meh, yay!) but you can use any kind of rating system you prefer.

Love Wine? Join me (hi, I’m Madeline Puckette!) and subscribe for free to the Wine Folly newsletter. By the way, this article was originally featured on the Wine Folly Blog on November 28, 2016.

The Wine Tasting Method (Video) | Wine Folly