The Proper Way to Taste Wine

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Photo by Kym Ellis on Unsplash

Are you looking to take up wine tasting and collecting fine wines as a new hobby? Knowing the proper way to taste wine will deepen your appreciation for wine and the winemakers. This includes not only appreciating the taste of the wine but also the smell and look. While the smell of wine provides thousands of unique scents, your taste buds are limited to just sweet, sour, salty and bitter. It is this combination of the taste and smell that allows you to distinguish each flavour. Here, we are taking you through the proper way to taste wine and the different factors that come into play.

The Colour and Clarity of Wine

After you have poured your fine wine into a wine glass you should then tilt the glass away from you and take a closer look at the wine colour. You should try and look at this with a white background and see beyond the simple colour of white, pink or red. For example, if you are looking at a white wine, is it completely clear? Amber? Or golden? The appearance will have a big effect on the taste. You should also be looking at the opacity of the wine to see whether it is watery, dark, dull, cloudy or clear. The age of your wine investment will also have an effect on the colour as older red wines tend to have an orange tinge on the edge compared to young red wines, however, more mature white wines will be darker in colour than young white wines.

If you are collecting fine wines that require maturing, it is vital that you keep them in the correct storage. Cellars are ideal for both temperature and humidity and companies such as Octavian Vaults can provide the perfect setting for your wine investment.

The Smell of Wine

When tasting wine, many people forget to enjoy the smell of it. When wine tasting, you will want to get a good impression of your wine’s aroma. To do this, you can swirl your glass for around ten seconds and then smell it to obtain your first impression of the wine. It is important to swirl the glass as this will vaporize a little bit of the wine’s alcohol to release more natural aromas. Place your nose into the glass and inhale. Just a few of the smells you may notice are vanilla, berries, oak and citrus, depending on the fine wine that you are tasting. This smell is a great indicator of the wine’s quality and its unique characteristics.

The Taste of Wine

Last, but not least, we have the taste of wine. Have a small sip of your wine and allow it to roll around in your mouth.  First, you will gain an initial impression of the wine and this determined by the acidity, residual sugar, alcohol content and tannin levels.  The second stage is then to distinguish the flavour profile such as oak, spices or fruits. Finally, you will want to assess how long the flavour lasts in your mouth after you have swallowed it.

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