Top Ten Tasting Tips!

Posted: 26/06/2010 7:52:48 p.m.

Ever wondered how to actually 'taste' wine rather than just drink it? No? OK, fair enough! But for those who might be interested to give their palates the once over - here's a relaxed guide as to how to do it!

1 Unscrew bottle of wine, holding the neck of the capsule in your left hand, with the bottle at an angle across your chest, then twist the bottle towards you with your right hand (reverse if you are left-handed). You will hear the ‘lugs’ break, and then just twist the cap off. Easy! If you are opening a bottle with a cork in, then I hope it is suitably old (i.e. pre-screwcap technology) and not corked (‘corked’ is when a wine has been affected by a cork infected with TCA – trichloroansisole – a fungus from the cork oak tree that to date has been impossible to eradicate completely. The wine is often flat and dull with musty, dank aromas and flavours – not enjoyable at all!)
2 Pour some wine - about 3cm deep, into a glass preferably with a tapered top. A regular tasting glass is perfect – often called an XL5. As you stop pouring, twist the bottle towards you as you lift it from the glass to prevent it dripping. This is a nice touch and saves a whole load of spots on the table cloth....
3 Pick up the glass by the stem and look at the wine. It should be clear and bright, though some reds might be almost opaque – still, main thing is it shouldn’t bee dull and cloudy (unless the bottle had a lot of sediment and was shaken up or not decanted prior to pouring).
4 Swirl the wine around in the glass, still only holding the stem – this creates more surface area helping to release the wine’s aroma. And the fact the glass tapers towards the top means the aroma stays ‘trapped’ long enough to get a really good sniff, and you hopefully don’t end up wearing the contents.
5 Stick your nose in and sniff. First impressions count! What does it smell of? Sniff several times to help you determine what aromas there are. What hits you first? Fruit? Oak? Sweaty socks (yikes!)? Don’t be afraid or think you are wrong – there is no right or wrong! Whatever it smells of to you is right.
6 Take a mouthful and slosh it around your mouth as if it is mouthwash. This gets the wine to all the different receptors in your mouth giving you different indications such as sweet, sour, bitter, acid etc. Hopefully the flavours echo the aromas you already smelled on the nose. In other words it should taste similar to the ways it smells.
7 Suck in some air over your palate – go on, make that slurping sound, just like when sipping hot soup from a mug. This helps aerate the wine and encourage the flavours to reveal themselves. You’re worried!? I do this on stage having to wear a headset or lapel microphone! Believe me, you won’t sound that bad.
8 Spit it out! Oh, ok then – swallow it. What’s the finish like? Can you still taste the flavours of the wine or just feel the physical sensations? A good quality wine will have good length of flavour. And how was the texture? Light, crisp or weighty, maybe even oily. Mouth-coating? Perhaps creamy, or even chewy if a big red with lots of tannin (that’s the stuff that dries your mouth out – a natural preservative found in the skins and stems of grapes)
9 Repeat numbers 4 to 7 again to double-check your findings
10 If you liked the wine, pour a few more cm’s, sit back and enjoy (though I might suggest using a slightly larger glass – though not filled more a third. While the XL5’s are great for tasting and evaluation, they aren’t particularly romantic – functional rather than fun. I recommend Spiegelau (http://www.spiegelau.com) and Riedel (http://www.riedel.com)