How To Taste Wine

Wine is different from most other beverages. Its complexity of flavors and aromas and the unique way it behaves makes it one of the most fascinating beverages in the world. A quality bottle of wine will change, evolve, and may even get better with age. Learning to really taste wine will help you appreciate and understand the wine you are drinking. To get more out of every sip, glass, and bottle, you simply need to consider the wine in three stages: look, smell, then taste.

LOOK

Begin by looking at the wine against a plain background. Hold the glass by the base or the stem and tip it away from you at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Look down on it and you should be able to see how clear the wine is and whether it has any bubbles or foreign bodies, how deep the color is, its hue, and how much the color graduates from the centre to the rim.

Wine should always be clear and bright, never cloudy or hazy. At best the latter is caused by sediment that has been shaken up. At worst it suggests some kind of contamination. Sediment is far less common in white wine than red, but if it is present, it shows that it has not been over filtered - which is a point in its favor. Bubbles in still wines can be a danger sign, indicating an unwanted re-fermentation, but a few tiny bubbles in a white wine - especially a pale, young, light one for drinking young - might be deliberate.

Although color is less indicative for white wine than red, it still varies from almost colorless, with perhaps a hint of green, to deep yellow. Once you see brownish tinges, however, it means that things are not looking good: white wines get darker with age (the reverse of reds) and by the browning stage they are usually heavily oxidized, which gives them an increasingly off-taste. The color in red wine gives more away - in terms of age, quality, and provenance. Red wines gradually shed their color (eventually as sediment), which means they become paler with age, changing from a deep purple-red, through to ruby, to brick-red, and finally to an over-the-hill tawny. The place to look to get a feel for a wine's age is the rim: the paler and browner it is (and the greater the gradation of color from the centre of the glass), the more mature the wine. And generally speaking a red wine of some quality that is intended to be aged, rather than drunk within a couple of years, needs to have considerable color to start with because color is closely linked to tannin content, and tannin is a major life-giver in red wines.

Now for the swirl. Either put the glass on the table, or continue to hold it by the stem or base, and then twirl it around to get the wine moving. The main point of doing this is to aerate the wine so that it releases its smells, or aromas - but, before you plunge your nose into the glass, take a look. The way the wine clings to the glass and then trickles down may tell you something. A wine that trickles back only slowly and in distinct streams, or "legs", is fairly viscous, which means that it is high in alcohol, sugar, or both. A wine with an edge that breaks quickly and raggedly may be old, very light, and dry, or you may have a not very well-rinsed glass! (Detergent and cloth residues interfere with the surface tension of the wine.)

SMELL

Put your nose down to the glass and inhale deeply. Then give your glass its second twirl, put your nose further into it and inhale again. Most people find one deep sniff more rewarding than several short sharp ones, but the important thing is to do what is most effective for you.

The first thing you learn is that wine doesn't smell of grapes. In fact it smells of wine. And wine can smell like strawberries, bananas, blackcurrants, peaches, green peppers, and an extraordinary number of other familiar non-wine substances, precisely because they share the same volatile chemical compounds. Some 500 aromatic compounds have been identified in wine to date, variously derived from the grapes themselves, the fermentation process and the maturation process. The most obvious and fruity aromas come from the grapes especially from the skin and flesh just beneath. The fermentation process yields more complex aromas, which at their most easily identifiable include yeast, butter, freshly sawn oak, and other oak-derived aromas such as vanilla, spice, and toast. The complicated and still partly mysterious chemical and physical changes that take place as wine matures produce the so-called tertiary aromas - the most subtle and difficult to describe and identify, but ultimately perhaps the most rewarding. In white wines, both sweet and dry, the most obvious is usually honey, with toast or brioche in Champagne and petrol in Riesling. Red wine maturation aromas are even harder to pinpoint, except that the fruit character becomes mellower and the good wines simply become richer and more profound. Together, the secondary and tertiary aromas are called the "bouquet", although the word tends to be loosely used - often for the smell as a whole. The less euphonious but succinct "nose" is also used for the overall smell. So, that's the science, but how does it shape up in practice? Assuming that the wine is in prime condition, it should smell clean and fresh rather than stale or baked - although, with a wine of so me age, it isn't the invigorating freshness of youth. It should also smell in some way fruity, although not all grape varieties have the strong, fruity identity of, say, Cabernet Sauvignon or Gewurztraminer

On the whole you should feel that the aromas are attractive, but there are some honorable exceptions, especially among old wines. Mature burgundy, for example, can smack of farmyards and well-patronized stables, while other old reds, especially claret, can be smell like mushrooms. Red wines from the Syrah (Shiraz) grape can be quite leathery, or tarry. Among white wines, the strong petrol or kerosene smell acquired by the Riesling grape can come as a shock. If you do encounter an off-putting smell, but one which is not positively bad, and if you sense that there is more to the wine than this one particular pong, think of it as a kindred spirit to one of those awe-inspiringly smelly, but wonderfully tasty, cheeses. So far as positively bad smells are concerned, all you will really need to know about are the few easily recognized ones. A musty, dank, moldy smell indicates a "corked" wine, one irredeemably tainted by contaminated cork. The corked smell always gets worse rather than better when the wine is in the glass and exposed to air. A wine that smells of vinegar is almost certain to be beyond hope. The same goes for a wine smelling of cheap, tired sherry; but oxidation - the problem in this case - takes a while to reach such a stage. On its way it may give a flat, stale, cardboard like smell to white wines, or a stewed, sharp, tomato puree aroma to reds, but it isn't always the most obvious of off-smells. A whiff of bad eggs, struck matches, blocked drains, old over-cooked cabbage, or burnt rubber are all caused by sulphur related problems and the wine should be discarded.

TASTE

Take a sip - a generous sip, but not a mouth so full that the reflex is to swallow immediately. Savor the flavors, rolling the wine gently around your mouth so that it reaches every taste bud. Then, if you're on your own, or feeling brave in sympathetic company, open your lips and draw in some air. (Yes, the slurping sound is you.) This aerates the wine, just as the earlier twirl of the glass did, and helps send the volatile compounds up from the back of your mouth to your olfactory bulb, the all-important organ at the top and back of your nose. Swallow (or spit) only when you have really got a sense of the flavors and feel of the wine. Then pay attention to the taste that is left - known as the finish or aftertaste. It should be pleasant and it should linger (try counting the seconds).

The first thing you usually learn is that your nose was right. You smelt blackcurrants, cedar wood, and tobacco, or melon, vanilla, and honey, and those are the flavors you taste. The mouth, by sending these volatile compounds up to the olfactory bulb, largely confirms what bulb and brain have already told you about the aromas. But the emphasis may be different: you may find their relative intensity has changed now you are experiencing them with other flavors and sensations. And taste reveals other facets of a wine's make-up, quality, and constitution. Although taste buds on their own only pick up a few basic, non-volatile flavors, they play a crucial role in that they "feel" the wine, with certain groups of taste buds having particular strengths.

Those at the tip of the tongue are especially sensitive to sugar. Those at the sides are more alert to acid sharpness, and those at the back are often acutely aware of bitterness. The taste buds also register astringency (from tannin or acid), roughness or harshness (from tannin), smoothness (glycerol), and three other very important aspects of any wine - its "weigh t", its balance of flavors, and its length or aftertaste. Weight (light, medium, or full-bodied) is perceived through alcohol, glycerol, tannin, sugar, and all the other non-water elements that together are called "extract". It is basically a matter of style. The question of balance (harmony of sugar, acid, tannin, and alcohol levels) and the length of time the flavors last are aspects more related to quality. The greater the wine, the more harmonious all the elements appear to be and the longer and more intensely the taste lingers.

But balance can be difficult to assess, particularly in young wines that need cellaring for some years before they are drinkably mature. Red wines for laying down will have a certain amount of acidity and rather more tannin. Tannin is the inherent red wine preservative that gradually softens as the wine matures, but it is not in itself very pleasant, either in flavor or feel. What the expert looks for in a young red wine is sufficient (i.e. a balance of) ripe fruit t1avour behind the tannin. Then, by the time the wine is fully mature, the tannin should be mellow and seamlessly blended with the other flavors and textures.

It is much less prominent in white wines (although certainly not absent), but it is the acid levels in whites intended to age that need to be high. The effect of age is to soften acidity to the taste (although it doesn't actually reduce it). Again, the key is to have sufficient fruit at the outset, so that it does not "dry out", or fade, before the acidity has softened. The acid balance is also very important, and particularly precarious, in sweet wines.

The taste of new oak offers another area of potential imbalance. It gives dimension and complexity of texture to a wine, as well as contributing its own seductive flavors, but it shouldn't be intrusive - and certainly it should not be so assertive that you feel you might as well be chewing toothpicks. You will have no trouble spotting an old wine with too much oak: it will be dry, saw dusty, and fruitless. But in a young wine you may have to delve behind the oaky exterior to a fruity core: the fruit must be there if the wine is to develop well.

Finally, when you have swallowed or spat out the wine, you should be left with a taste that is undeniably clean and pleasant. It shouldn't, for example, be predominantly tart or bitter. And this pleasant "aftertaste" should linger. If it disappears in an instant, you have a very ordinary, simple wine, but if it lasts more than about thirty seconds you probably have something rather good. So take another sip. All this might have read as if tasting a wine takes an inordinately long time. It really doesn't - a minute or two, and I can assure you they will be minutes well and pleasurably spent.

SPITTING

The other thing you need to get to grips with, if you are going to taste a lot of wines in earnest, is spitting. I know it goes against the grain to spit out good wine and against what you always thought was good manners, but spitting is the done thing.