I am sure most of the members of FOV know or think they know how to taste wine. Here, I am to summarize and remind people of some obvious and some not so obvious things. I have no intention to be snobbish about wines and wine tastings. Afterall, wines are to be enjoyed and you should not feel you need to be constrained by rules.
BEFORE YOU GO
Always go to a wine tasting with something in your stomach. Wines with an empty stomach is a bad combination and you will be tempted to start eating whatever is there. Or worse, you start to lose your composure and may misbehave and do something you will regret later.
Please make sure you are not wearing any perfume before heading into the tasting room. In fact, it would be best that all tastings be scent free. As wine enjoyment and tasting are based majority on the nose, your perfume will affect other people’s enjoyment negatively.
DON’T TOUCH THE CHEESE
Once you started eating cheeses, your palate will be coated with cheese, and I guarantee you will not be able to taste all the fine nuances and differences the wines have to offer. Same comment for the olives and meat. They change the pH in your mouth and affect the taste of the wines.
I would even suggest you don’t touch any of the food, except the bread, until you have at least finished one round of tasting all the wines offered before looking for food pairings. It is okay to have a piece of bread in between each wine to cleanse your palate.
DURING THE TASTING
You have probably heard the saying “it is all in the nose”. The majority of the nuances in a wine is in the nose. So, sniff the wine in your glass. Swirl the wine around to get some oxygen into the wine to enhance the aroma in your nose before tasting in your mouth. Use short sniffs. The nerves in your nose get tired and fatigue very quickly. Long sniffs will get the nerves tired very fast.
Between sniffs, look at the colour of the wine in the glass, preferably with a piece of white background. Is it clear? Is the colour indicative of the grape(s) the wine is made of? A burgundy should not look like a big Cab or vice versa.
Finally, have a small sip. Let the wine roll around your palate. You don’t want to swallow right away. Let the wine do its dances in your mouth. You have probably heard this: the nerves in different part of your mouth and tongue can detect different taste. You want the wine to be tasted by all part of your mouth and tongue. I have on occasions tell people to do French kisses with the wine!
It is acceptable to slightly open your mouth and softly suck air in to blow over the wine in your mouth. This allows your nose to also get into the action. You will be surprised what nuances you pick up with this action.
Finally, swallow or spit the wine out. Both are acceptable behaviours. As much as you want to swallow and drink all the wines offered, if there are twenty or forty wines on offer, it is humanly impossible to swallow all of them. Besides, it would not be very enjoyable towards the end.
Try not to hold the glass with the bowl. There is a reason why fine wine glasses are made with a stem. You don’t want to affect the temperature of the wine being served, assuming the agent or pourer know the best temperature the wine should be served. The only exception: if you think the wine is too cold for the tasting, do go ahead and wrap your hands around the bowl to warm the wine up a bit and taste again.
In a technical, sit-down tasting where a flight of wines is offered for comparison, do save a few sips in each glass, and come back to do the comparison between all the offerings. If it is a walk-around tasting, either finish the wine or spit them out and go to the next wine. In between, rinse and cleanse your tasting glass with water before the next wine.
In a lot of walk-around tasting, where wines are poured by an agent or pourer, I see a lot of people want or like to discuss the wine with the agent. This is perfectly okay but please watch yourself that you are not monopolizing the pourer. Please keep in mind that there are other people lining up behind or at your side wanting their pour. By you parking in front of the pourer and keep talking, you are diminishing the other people’s enjoyment of the tasting.
So, please move on or at least, move over a bit to the side, so other people can get their pour too.
NOTES MAKING
I encourage you to make notes during the tasting. In a sit-down situation, this allows you to monitor how the wines develop over the period of the tasting when you go back to each wine in subsequent sipping and comparison.
In a walk around situation, with many wines, it can be very confusing, and you will quickly lose track of which wine is which. This is even more important if you are tasting to buy.
I know how difficult it is to have a glass in one hand and a note pad and pen in the other, even more so when you have food as well in a small plate. I use a simple way to rate the wines in those situations. I use either checkmarks or stars to denote how much I like the wines. A wine which deserves some notice is one star or check. An above others wine will be 2 stars or checks. An outstanding wine I would consider buying will be 3 stars or checks. I also use short hands to denote things such as ‘c’ for clove, p for plums, ‘rc’ for red cherry, ‘bc’ for black cherry, ‘bf’ for black fruit, ‘t’ for tannins, ‘long’ for long finish, etc.
You can develop your own shorthand.
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