How to taste a Wine

Pour

When it comes to tasting a wine, you want to fill about a third of your glass. Doing so gives you more freedom to inspect the wine, and allows the aromas to gather in the rest of the glass. Not to mention, it stops you getting absolutely trollied at any tasting!

Look

A wine's colour can provide some significant clues to its character. A pale background, or a piece of white paper, is ideal to do this. Hold the glass by the stem and tilt the glass slightly. Take a good look at the colour, look for how deep it is and what hue it is. Additionally look at the edges, see how the colour graduates.

If you were to be doing a blind tasting, the colour can give you clues to determine what wine you are drinking.

Swirl

Give the wine a good swirl, this will help you smell the wine. This can take a little practice to do without the help of a flat surface.

Smell

Smell plays an extremely important part in tasting, and the smell of a wine is part of the experience. Try and identify what you can smell, Click Here for a list of aromas you might be able to smell.

If you can't smell much, and the wine is cold, cup your palms round the glass and give it another swirl. However, bear in mind it could be that the particular wine you are tasting has very little smell. Also, when it comes to smelling a wine, your nose can get tired quickly. It is a good idea to give your nose a few seconds break rather than to sniff harder. Swirling the glass again can also help.

Taste

Take a good sip and roll the wine round your mouth. Savour the wine and try to identify what you can taste. When you have finnished, swallow and look for the after taste, how long does it last?

Spit (Optional)

It might seem outragous to spit at a tasting, and even blasphemous to waste the wine. However, I can assure you it is the done thing, a winemaker most certainly won't get upset if you spit out his wine after tasting it, (which might be a good thing!). That said, spattering fellow tasters is generally frowned upon!

The idea of spitting is, again, to stop you getting absolutely trollied at any tasting! A sip might not sound much, but 50 sips or 100 sips and you will be well on your way to being paralitic!

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Serving a Wine | How to taste a Wine | Tasting Types | Describing a Wine | Wine with Food | Storing a Wine | Aging Wine |
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