Tasting Wine

In our first class, we had an introduction on wine tasting.

We first started by recognizing the 3 component of wine

• acidity
• sweetness
• tanin

Tanin is this feeling in your mouth after you sip on tea or wine that makes your mouth very dry, makes your front teeth stick to your lips.

After that, we started to look at the component of Wine tasting.

As a first note, the proper way to hold your glass of wine is to hold it by the stem otherwise, the body heat of your hands will change the temperature of the wine by holding the glass.

Before we jump on the different element of wine tasting, I wanted to share a few points from an article on what makesa great wine.

What Makes Great Wine Great?

There are 5 qualities a taster must evaluate to determine if a wine is great or not.

Expressiveness: does the wine express clearly its character and the different aromas?

Complexity: do you find something new everytime you take a sip?

District varietal character: does the wine present its grape variatal in a clear way?

Integration: Have all the components come together in a harmonious way?

Connectedness: does the flavor makes you imagine of the place where the wine comes from? does it embodies the region, the terroir where the wine was made?

Those elements are what you look for when wine tasting.

The visual

Old or young wine?

The color will tell you if a wine is young or old. You must hold a white piece of paper behind a glas of wine and look at the light that goes through the glas on the paper.

The rule is as follow:

• For red wines, the clearer it is, the older it is.
• For white, the darker it is, the older it is.

Also, as you incline your glass, look at the peripheral of the wine. The wider the clear periphery is for red wines the older it is.

Thick or thin skin grape?

Swirl the glass to allow the wine to oxygenate. If the wine leaves marks, the wine used thick skin grapes variety.

High in alcohol?

Swirl the glass again. Looking at the legs (the vertical marks) will tell you if the wine is rich in alcohol. Lots of legs indicates more alcohol than the wines with less legs.

Wines from the old world (France, Italy, Spain, … ) usually has less alcohol than wines from the new world (Australia, Chile, Argentine, New Zealand … ).

The smell

Our instructor said if you don’t know where to start for a smell, think about the following:

• For whites, does it smell like pear or apple? A white wine is most of the time smell either one of the 2
• For red, do you smell red fruits or dark fruits?

The tasting

She asked us whenever we try wine to make some noise with our mouth to oxygenate the wine. Tasting is suppose to confirm the visual and smell.

The different Wine Varietals

I just wanted to list the different grape varietals:

• Pinot Noir
• Sangiovese
• Barbera
• Tempranillo
• Cabarnet Franc
• Zinfandel
• Gewurtztraminer
• Pinot Gris
• Chardonnay
• Muscat Blanc
• Pinot Blanc
• Semillon
• Merlot
• Malbec
• Granache
• Cabarnet Sauvignon
• Syrah
• Nebbiolo
• Riesling
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Albarino
• Chenin Blanc
• Gruner Veltliner
• Viognier
• Marsanne
• Roussanne

If I can remember all of this at the end of the class, I would have learnt something already!

Conclusion after the first week

Being able to describe the smell is still difficult for me, I managed 2/3 times on the first week … Hopefully, I’ll improve my skills in the near future …