WINE LIKE A PRO

HANDY TASTING TIP:

If you think your sense of smell needs help, put one hand over the top of the glass when swirling and immediately your hand is taken away smell the wine again – a lot more gently. Try closing your eyes when ‘nosing’ the wine as well, to cut out distractions.

WINE LIKE A PRO

Tasting wine isn’t just about flavour: it uses all five of your senses, creating a unique experience you will remember

Drinking wine is easy. ‘Tasting’ wine is a skill that can be

learned, and like most skills, the more you practice, the more accomplished you will become. Great wine experiences are nearly always based on balance, length and complexity. How it makes you feel, a lasting package of flavours and textures can differentiate a ‘fine’ wine from a simple wine.

First - and importantly - use a clean, highly polished, stemmed glass with a wide-ish bowl that tapers inward at the top. This allows the taster to tilt the glass, swirl the wine and get the nose deep into the aromas.

HOW TO TASTE WINE

Wine aromas are essentially broken down into categories:

• Fruits and their condition - such as fresh, cooked or dried

• Non-fruits - flowers, spices, teas, vegetables, and abstract smells like leather or meat

• Earth or mineral suggestions, such as clays, rocks or stone

• Oak – does the wine smell of baking spices like vanilla or clove, smoky, even the smell of bacon?

The collection of these aromas, and how strong or subtle they are, will lead to your decisions about balance, length and complexity. Remember also that a wine can have a range of power on the nose - be very subtle and floral with no oak to very fruity and toasty with oak.

‘Swirling’ wine is not pretentious. It is necessary to release the package of smells, ‘breaking’ the surface and releasing aromas. It is important to get your nose right inside the glass.

The first sniff, to identify the wine’s condition, should be quite firm: you should be able to hear yourself sniff wine. The second sniff is softer and used to start listing categories of fruits - then nonfruits, soils or minerals and use of oak.

Next, assess the wine’s taste - take a decent sip and hold it on the palate for about eight seconds then ‘mouthwash’ it - this lets your palate get used to the weight, impact and intensity of the juice and releases the flavours. Always spit the wine out (preferably in a civilised way, into a suitable receptacle!). Higher acid levels can make your palate produce more saliva; higher alcohol can make your exhale breath feel warm or even hot; are the flavours you taste the same as the ones you smelled?

Now re-taste – can you sense anything new? The longer the flavour and intensity, the higher the quality and complexity. Five to ten seconds can suggest a lower quality wine; thirty seconds to a minute or more arguably a high-quality wine.

Learning how your own palate works is critical to wine tasting success. Practice a lot, and you’ll learn more each time.

A FEW DON’TS BEFORE YOU START TASTING:

→ Don’t taste just after cleaning your teeth – this makes wine taste metallic and acidic. → Don’t chew gum before tasting – it gives same result as toothpaste. → Don’t consume foods which have a dramatic effect on wine’s texture and flavour, such as orange or pineapple juice, chilli and truffles. → Coffee and tea beforehand can be okay, as long as there’s a decent gap before tasting.