3 minute read
WINE TASTING 101
PHOTO BY GUY HAND
By Kathryn House McClaskey
Kathryn House McClaskey is the Founder of House of Wine. She can be reached via email at: kat@houseofwineco.com
From swirling to swishing and everything in between, wine tasting is overwhelming, and sometimes it seems like little more than pomp and circumstance. Truthfully, there is a rhyme and reason for many of the tasting techniques a person utilizes. By breaking them down into five simple steps, you will learn to taste wine and showcase your professional testing skills with ease.
The first step in wine tasting is to analyze how the wine appears visually. Most wines are clear and bright, indicating clean winemaking. Color-wise, white wines vary in color from pale yellow to rich gold, while reds vary from purple and ruby to brick red and garnet. Typically, the darker the color of wine, the more intense the wine can be on the palate. White wines turn golden with age, while reds turn more brick red and slightly brown.
Next, you’ll evaluate the aroma of the wine. To do this, you hold the glass by the stem and gently swirl it while taking short, small sniffs. Young wines will showcase the aromas typical of their variety. White wine aromas vary from citrus to apple, peach notes, and tropical fruit aromas. Red wines can smell like red fruit (raspberries, strawberries) or black fruit (blackberries, black currants) and often have notes of oak (vanilla, baking spice).
For the third step in wine tasting like a professional, you’ll taste the wine and think about the structure or “bones” of the wine. Is it sweet (has residual sugar) or dry (no sugar)? How sour is it? If it’s a red wine, does it dry your mouth out and taste bitter (tannin)? Does it warm the palate as you taste it (alcohol)? All of these pieces of information can tell you about the style of the wine.
The fourth step is simply an extension of smelling a wine, which is understanding the wine’s flavors. When we slurp our wine and swish it in our mouths, the goal is to aerate it and allow the flavors to float through a pathway that connects our mouth to our nose. At this point, we decide if the wine tastes like what it smells like or if new and different flavors abound.
Lastly is the fun part: evaluating what you think of the wine. If you enjoy the wine, try to describe why. Is it because of the aromas, flavors, or the structure? What are the key parts of the wine that stand out? Personally, I enjoy wines that showcase balance, where all structural elements sing in a symphony and heighten the aromas and flavors of the wine. Great Chablis (Chardonnay from the Chablis region of France) and complex Rioja Gran Reservas from Spain are some of my favorites.
Wine tasting shouldn’t be intimidating. By following the five steps of determining a wine’s visual appearance, aromas, structure, flavors, and overall evaluation, you, too, can taste like a professional. Salud!
