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What is Wine Tasting?
Wine tasting is the process of evaluating wine through sensory examination. The tasting of wine has taken place ever since the first wine was produced, but by the 14th century, a formal method was adopted to evaluate a wine. Today, there are professional wine tasters who work as sommeliers or wine buyers for retail outlets. Of course, you do not have to be a professional to enjoy a wine tasting. It is a great way to learn about all sorts of wines.
There are four stages to the tasting of wine:
- Appearance
- Aroma in the glass
- Sensations in the mouth
- Finish
These four stages paint a picture of the properties found in each wine, including complexity and character, potential and possible faults. The overall assessment is based upon this examination. Wine can be tasted on its own or in comparison to several other wines. This is known as tasting a flight. Horizontal tasting compares many wines of the same vintage, while vertical tasting refers to comparing several wines from the same winery.
Appearance is judged by serving the wine in a clear glass. Hold the glass up against a white background to see the wine's true color. Tilt the glass a little bit and look at the deepest portion and at the surface. Red wines tend to lose color as they age while white wines tend to gain color.
The aroma is best enjoyed when the glass has a rim that encloses the contents a little bit. Swirling the wine in the glass helps release the fragrance.
Taste is judged by swirling the wine in your mouth so all your taste buds get in on the party. The wine also gives you a tactile experience while it is in your mouth. Some feel refreshing, while others may feel prickly, velvety, or flat.
The finish is the aftertaste you are left with after you swallow or spit out the wine.
It can be fun to do a blind tasting, where the bottles are disguised so you do not know what you were tasting until after you have made your assessment. Sometimes in blind tastings, black glasses are used so you cannot see the color of the wine. Experienced tasters can be prejudiced if they know details about the wine such as color, reputation, price, winery, and so on.
It is not uncommon in blind tastings for the favorite wine of the evening to turn out to be from an inexpensive vintage while more expensive wines were found lacking in one aspect or another. If the tasters had known more about the more expensive wines, chances are they would have placed them as favorites despite what their tongues told them. Another test like this has shown that tasters will rate a wine they are told is expensive higher than the exact same wine when they are told it is inexpensive. The power of suggestion can make a big difference.
During wine tastings, it is very important to keep the wines at the optimum temperature. If a wine is served at a temperature that is colder, you miss out on many of the flavor nuances. If a wine is served at a temperature that is warmer than optimum, the wine begins to gradually turn, bringing out the flaws.
