Better wine tasting

There are four S’s so to speak when first experiencing any wine.  They are in order: see, swirl, smell, and sip.  I realize that many experienced wine drinkers might find this post a bit redundant- a lesson they learned long ago- which is why I am going to explain what all 4 of the S’s tell us as well as what one might miss in the wine drinking experience if one were to skip over one or all of them.   These simple things can tell us a surprising amount about the wine before we even consume it: there are wine connoisseurs who can tell us what the wine is without ever looking at the label!

For more of a visual, please refer to my post from last quarter where I taste and compare two Rieslings:

See:

How the wine looks can tell us a lot about the wine.  The color, first will indicate whether the wine is white, red, or rosé.  The presence of bubbles will indicate whether the wine is sparkling or in the case of vinho verdé just slightly bubbly.  Debris in the bottom of the glass (be them tartaric acid crystals, dead yeast (lees), or pulp) can also tell us a bit about the wine depending on what is found.  Beyond those basic visual indicators, the color can tell us other things. 

In a white wine, one may look at the color of the wine and be able to tell several things.  If the wine is aged, it may have a darker color than a very young white wine.  Aging in white wines is a little less common than in red wines due to the fact that reds tend to age better but certainly some aging has been done quite well with some white grapes.  Most notably, Rieslings tend to age well but there are others.  Another factor that can affect the color of a white wine is whether or not it is oaked.  Oaking a wine can drastically alter the color of the wine depending on how long the wine is in the barrel or even what type of barrel is used.  Typically, an oaked white wine will have a fuller, darker more golden color to it.  Finally, another factor that can change the color of a white wine is the alcohol content.  Alcohol can sometimes cause wines to have a darker more golden color. 

In a rosé, one may look at the color to judge whether the wine is being drunk in time.  Rosé wines are seasonal because of their delicate color, which can become more orange-brown tinged if they are not consumed in time.  These wines are literally a cross between a white wine and a red wine and are made in two ways: either the wine is made from red grapes and only allowed to ferment on the skins for a short time or the juice from the grapes naturally has some color to it.  This is why the color and taste of these wines are so delicate.  The tingeing of color is not the only disappointment if these wines are held on to for too long- the taste can suffer greatly as well.  The season for rosé wines tends to be spring and early summer.

In a red wine, one may actually be able to determine the type of the grape used to make the wine.  Pinot noir, for example, will have a very telling watery edge around the glass with a dark garnet center.  Red wine can also, like the rosés acquire an orange-brown tinge to indicate that the wine has been aged a very long time and possibly oxidized a bit.  In these older wines, you would also likely notice that the wine had shrunk in volume a bit over time also due to oxidation. 

Swirl:

Not only will swirling the wine stir up the aroma and oxidize the wine a bit- it can also tell you more about the wine.  Swirling the wine, you want to look for the wine to stick to the sides of the glass and run down.  This effect is called “legs” and can indicate a higher alcohol content than a wine with less or even no legs.  The next “S” (smell) starts with swirling.

Smell:

“If you do not smell a wine or simply take a brief cursory whiff, very little information goes to the brain, and not surprisingly, you will have trouble deciding what the wine tastes like.”  I took this quote from Karen MacNeil’s The Wine Bible because she sums it up so perfectly.  Much of what you taste in your wine will actually come from what you smell.  For this reason, smell is a very important part of a proper wine tasting. 

There are a lot of smells in wine from barnyard to basement there are literally hundreds of descriptors which have been used over the centuries.  Most commonly, one will smell a mix of different fruits but there are also floral scents, nutty scents, mineral scents, even the smell of petrol has entered in now and then.  To simplify tastings, Ann C. Noble invented an aroma wheel which many find useful starting out. 

The smells in a wine can tell us about how the wine was made- in some cases they can tell us what grape the wine was made from, whether oak was used or not, whether malolactic fermentation was used, etc.  I’ve even smelled sunshine or the countryside in a few well crafted wines.  I have the best experience when I let the wine “talk” to me and tell me about itself.  I do this by following the whole process and not trying to smell for specific descriptors but rather put a name on the ones that come to the forefront.  This way, you can get a feel for the wine.

Sip

A tip from my Wines Professor Lorraine Hems who teaches in the Hospitality program at RIT is to throw away the first sip of wine.  Why, you may ask?  This is because you may have eaten something or drank something throughout the day that would taint your palate.  In order to get the best first impression of the wine, you almost want to swish the wine around on the first sip and either spit or swallow when finished.  Never evaluate on the first sip.

Now that palates have been cleansed it’s time to taste all of the beautiful descriptors you found in the nose of that wine. This is where the wine comes to life.  With tasting, there are three main flavors you will notice: sweet, sour and bitter.  Salt is largely excluded because it’s extremely rare to find a salt flavor in a wine.  The only grape variety I know of to have a salty flavor is the trebbiano grape which is used in the making of balsamic vinegar.  This grape is rarely used for wine.

 

Sweet, sour and bitter have attributions to specific qualities in the wine.  Sweet is attributed to the residual sugar (or added sugar) in the wine.  Residual sugar refers to sugar that was not fermented out of the wine by the yeast.  Sour is attributed to acid in the wine.  Acidity can have a lot of bearing on the flavor of the wine making it very tart or in more balanced wines making it well rounded.  Finally, the most common source for a bitter taste is the tannin which typically only occurs in rosé or red wines.

I hope this has been an interesting review even for the experienced wine drinker, and as always- enjoy your wine!