Wine
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Ambassador of Swiss flavors
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Table of Contents Preface Tasting objectives Evolve in your tasting Tasting conditions Tasting order Decanter, Carafe ? The phases of tasting and wine analysis Visual phase : study of the color Evaluation criteria
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Olfactory phase : study of the aromas and bouquet Evaluation criteria Tasting phase : structure, body and flavor Conclusion Some wine flaws Swiss wine – the Swiss secret Impressum Contact
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Preface Dear Readers, First, let us thank you for holding in your hand a SwissTasting® product. It is an honor for us to share a part of our heritage with you.
living, complex and difficult to understand product. To help you decipher it, we have assembled the best experts and published this fantastic guide.
Allow us to have a few words on what motivates us. With SwissTasting®, we revisit old traditions without spoiling them ; it is simply an innovative way to rediscover Switzerland and its culture. We can look at this journey as the uninhibited expression of an aesthetic Switzerland that combines legend to modernity.
It remains for us to wish you, on behalf of all our partners and collaborators, an enjoyable read and an excellent tasting
In this work, we show you, in an enjoyable and easily understandable way, the theoretical bases to carry out a tasting. Wine is a
Ignazio Cassis President
Arnaud Schaller Director
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Tasting objectives Tasting is above all a way to have fun. It is a way to recognize if we like a wine or not, to assess its quality compared to it reputation, to judge the releveance of its price, to assess its aging potential and to identify its maturity.
It is especially important to remain humble, to accept not seeing everything and to sometimes be mistaken. Just like reading a book or listening to a song, there may be important dierences in perception and interpretation.
However, tasting also has other functions. It allows us to evolve and implicitly improve our ability to judge the intrinsic characteristics of a wine by putting what we taste, feel, and smell into words.
Our interpretations will be very dierent according to our culture, our education, our course of life and our origins. We must know how to integrate these parameters as we share our experience with others.
Finally, tasting is also a nice way to socialize around a common passion. It allows us to share, to discuss and to get carried away sometimes.
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Evolve in your tasting The most relevant way to evolve in your tasting technique is to try as many dierent wines as you can as often as possible. In addition, it is very important to : - Taste dierent types of wine, from all regions and all price ranges - Talk, discuss and share with other people - Taste good and lesser wines in order to compare - Record your observations in a notebook - Keep your sense of smell constantly alert to store a maxiumum of aromas It is important to note that the molecules present in wine are the same we find everywhere in our environment. In autumn, for ex-
ample, do not hesitate to take a handful of leaves and to crush and smell them. If you are lucky, you may one day find the same odors in a nicely evolved red wine.
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Tasting Conditions Wine is best enjoyed before a meal - around 11 h or 18 h - when the buds have not yet been over saturated. Do not, however, taste on an empty stomach as our senses get tired much quicker this way. The general custom is to taste while eating neutral foods, such as a bit of bread and water. It is also preferable to perform the tasting on a white table or to use a sheet of white paper to accurately analyze the color of the wine. This allows the slight nuances of the colors to be easily distinguishable. In addition, it is wise to always check the smell of the glasses and their clenliness before filling them. The temperature of the wine is also very important. Too cool of a temperature tends to annihilate all the flavors, and too high of a temperature stresses excessive acidity of the wine and alcohol.
Incorrect temperatures also cause the wine to lose its very volatile aromatic structure. In general, the higher the acidity of the wine, the lower the temperature at which it should be served. Following are some temperature indications : -
Light, dry white wines : about 8 ° C Sweet white wines : about 10 ° C Full-bodied dry white wines : about 12 ° C Dry rosé wines : about 8 ° C Light red wines : about 13 ° C Full-bodied red wines : from 15 ° C to about 18 ° C.
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Tasting Order In general, it is necessary to take into account the power of the wine in order to designate the order of the tasting. Below is a guidline to a general tasting order : -
Light dry white wine Sparkling white wine Full-bodied dry white wine Rosé wines Sparkling rosé wines Light red wines Bodied red wines Sweet or syrupy white wines Natural sweet wines
The number of wines to taste obviously depends on you and how used you are to analyzing them. If you are new to wine tasting, try about six different varieties. This is usually a good amount to be able to properly appreciate all of them.
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Decanter or Carafe ? There is a real difference between putting wine in a decanter or a carafe. Decanting helps oxygenate the wine so that it delivers all its aromas and also separates the sediment, which is due to the aging of the wine. In the most common cases and uniquely for red wine, these sediments are the result of precipitation, year after year, of dyes and tannins of the wine in the bottle. We, therefore, usually decant old wines. Be careful with these wines, though, as they are very fragile and you do not want to « kill » them ; decant them with delicacy. When using a carafe, we simply pour the wine into a container so that it can oxygenate faster. We often do this with full-bodied red wines that are young and shy and often have difficulty expressing
themselves. Putting wine in a carafe is not a risky opertation ; so do not be reluctant to do so.
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