Wine Tasting
Wine tasting is the goal for most people who enjoy wine. Vineyards and wine makers spend years of effort, hard work and patience to produce the wine we enjoy from the bottle, and truly enjoying wine requires the ability to taste the various characteristics associated with each different wine.
That does not mean you have to be able to identify subtle notes of flavour at a blind testing to enjoy wine, but knowing how to properly taste wine will surely improve your enjoyment of the entire wine drinking experience. It doesn't take a room full of professional critics to properly taste, recognise and enjoy what good wine has to offer.
How To Taste Wine
You can put as much or as little into wine tasting as you want, and while a quick sniff and swirl is enough for many people, others will host tasting parties that involve extensive tasting notes, blindfolds to discourage presumptions and painstaking measures to cleanse the pallet and gain the most out of the experience. However, generally, if you want to get a good idea of a wine's taste, start with these four elements:
- Appearance - The colour of wine is the first element to note when attempting to taste wine properly. It should have clarity and the colour itself should indicate the maturity of the wine. White wines are typically pale when young and golden as they age. Red wines start off darker and purplish, and then become lighter as they mature.
- Aroma - This is perhaps the most important part of wine tasting. While the tongue only recognises four taste characteristics (bitter, sour, salty and sweet), your nose can recognise thousands of aromas that can contribute to the flavour of wine. Swirling wine in the glass is intended to release its aroma.
- Taste - Taste combines with aroma to create the experience we known as wine tasting. To properly taste wine, a decent-sized sip is necessary, and this should be followed with the drawing in of air to help vapours reach the back of the mouth. Just don't draw back too sharply, or you may find yourself coughing and spluttering. Letting the wine roll over your tongue will aid the process, and serious wine tasters spit wine out to avoid the alcohol dulling their senses. However, that last part is up to you.
- Aftertaste - The aftertaste will likely magnify the good and bad characteristics of the wine. This is the part where wine aficionadas will detect flavour inclusions into the wine, and you can decide what flavours you enjoy or detest.
Wine is for enjoyment, and wine tasting ensures that the enjoyment is carried out to the full extent. There are wine tasting tours, wine tasting kits and various methods to test wine and experience its flavour. Make sure that no matter how you taste and drink wine, that you enjoy the experience and always find a new excuse to undertake wine tasting.
