Tasting The Wine:

Professional wine tasting is a serious activity which requires skill, experience and education.

However, every wine-lover needs at least a minimum know-how in wine tasting in order to maximise the palate and wine pleasure. The tasting process will be your most important tool in determining the quality of your relation with a new wine.

Tasting as many wines as possible will help to discover one’s own flavour profile. During tasting, wines are observed by three senses and finally an evaluation is made. This observation consists of the following steps.

The Appearance:

The first step is also called as “visual inspection”. A small amount of wine is poured into the wine glass which will then be held inclined over a white background. Then the color, tint, clarity and brightness of the wine are observed while checking the sediments.

The visual inspection is done by looking through the sides towards the middle part of the wine, the plurality of the tints in a wine can be considered as sign of quality and aptitude to ageing. The cloudiness indicates defects sourced by the production of the wine. Meanwhile the existence of sediments does not always suggest faults in a wine.

The Aromas:

The second step is the inspection of the effects that wine evokes on the nose. The most efficient sensual effect that indicates faults or qualities in a wine is the smell. The smells that the young wines bear are called as “aromas” as the smells of the aged ones are referred as “bouquet”.

The fruit and flower aromas that can be found in wines are the characteristical aromas that come from the grapes. These aromas vary from one wine to another depending on the grape variety used in production. Additionally some processes of wine production contribute to the flavours a wine can bear.

For instance, the malolactic fermentation adds a buttery flavour, as the ageing in oak gives aromas as vanilla, cedar and cloves. Under any circumstance, the human nose distinguishes first the bed smells. This goes the same for the wines: we first sense the unpleasant ragrances. The disturbing smells usually suggest faults in a wine. These include glue, burned matches, wet cloth, rotten egg smells. On the contrary, some fragrances, which can be found in aged wines and can evoke negative images at first (such as horse sweat, hay and leather), do not indicate any deficiency. As the 95% of the wines are produced as table wines and for immediate consummation, it is not very often that one meets this kind of fragrances.

The Effects on your Palate:

Once the appearance and aromas are inspected, the next step is to observe the effects that the wine evokes on the palate. For this, a big gulp of wine is taken. This gulp should not fill the mouth completely but should be sufficient to cover the whole tongue. The wine taken into the mouth is first “weighed” by the tongue. The feeling that the wine gives on the tongue is called the “body” of the wine.

If the density of the wine is close to that of water, then it is a light bodied wine. As the feeling approaches that of e.g. oil olive, then the wine can be described as “full bodied wine.” Components such as acid, tannins and sugar are also evaluated. According to the intensity of these elements, the wine is described as soft or rough, pungent or round, bitter, sour or sweet. Finally, in order to complete the inspection at nose, the aromas of the wine are examined in the mouth.

For this, the mouth is slightly parted and some air is sucked without swallowing the wine and the aromas are analyzed. The feeling that the wine leaves in the mouth after swallowing is named as “the finish” of the wine. Although it is described at the conclusion part, this aspect is also inspected on the palate.

The Conclusion:

Once all the steps are completed, we should decide whether the characteristics of the wine are well-balanced or not. Are the fruit, acidity, alcohol content and tannin balanced or do some characteristics dominate?

If there is a balance, then the wine is considered as a balanced wine. The efficiency of the wine on the palate, after the swallowing, is measured by the lastingness of the fruit and flavours. The wines whose effects last more than 45 seconds are considered as wines “with a long finish”. These are quality wines. Those who last between 15-30 seconds have medium finish and those that last less than 15 seconds have a short finish.