Wine Tasting Tips
True wine tasting involves a lot more than just drinking. To experience the many different qualities of each wine you need to evaluate the wine's color, clarity, aroma and taste.

Wine tasting requires practice and a systematic approach to help you note your personal observations, comparisons, likes and dislikes. Everyone’s palette is unique and every individual prefers different tastes.

Color

Hold your glass up to the light to observe its color. Look carefully at its subtle tints, hues and depth of color.

The color of a wine is affected by many elements including:

• Age
• Type of grape used
• Ripeness of the grape

All wines have color—even white wines—and they can vary greatly as they age. As a red wine ages, you will see hints of reddish-brown around the edges. As white wines age they become more golden.

Clarity

Look closely at your wine glass. Make a note if it the wine is clear or cloudy by looking for suspended materials. Suspended materials are usually undesirable. The clarity of a wine can be affected by the natural settling that occurs over time as the pigment of the grapes age.

Aroma

Swirl the wine around in your glass to release its full aroma or bouquet. The bouquet gives clues as to the wine’s composition, fermentation, aging, and can give hints of foreign odors such as wood, cork or other processing odors.

Taste

Take a small amount of wine in your mouth and swirl it around lightly so all your taste buds are exposed. Hold the wine in your mouth for a brief period and think about its taste using the following attributes.

• Sweetness
Sweetness comes from the wine's fruit flavors and any remaining fermented grape sugars. Wines with no perceived sweetness are categorized as "dry."

• Acidity
Acidity gives wine freshness and zest. When balanced, it makes for a fresh, crisp, enjoyable wine. Acidity can be responsible for the "vinegary" taste in some wines.

• Tannin
Tannin comes from the stems and skins of the grape. Tannin can be strong, but normally mellows with age. Tannin is most notable in red wines.

• Alcohol
Alcohol in low concentrations tastes slightly sweet. In high concentrations it gives a warm sensation.

 

• Body
Body is how the wine feels in your mouth. The fullness or thinness of wine can range from watery to velvety. The body of a wine can also be detected by swirling the wine in the glass and looking at how the wine falls in the glass.

 

• Finish

The finish, or aftertaste, is the overall taste that lingers after you've tasted the wine. High quality wine tends to leave a pleasing aftertaste lasting from 15 to 20 seconds after you've swallowed.