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The first step you have to undertake in wine
tasting is visual.
1. Fill up the glass up to 1/3
of its volume; never fill it more than half;
2. Hold the glass by the stem.
Initially you may find this too pretentious but there are
good reasons for it:
*) by doing it this way you can
actually observe the wine in it;
b) this will keep your fingerprints off the bowl;
*) the heat from your palm will
not change the temperature of the wine.
There’s a good saying by
one of the greatest French wine lovers, Emil Painot: Offer
someone a glass of wine and you can immediately tell whether
he/she is a connoisseur by the way they hold the glass.”
Even though you may not think of yourself as a connoisseur,
you could still learn how to hold the wine glass.
3. Focus on the color intensity
and the transparency of the liquid.
*) the color of the wine, and
more specifically its nuances, are best observed on a white
background.
*) the wine’s intensity
is best judged by holding the glass without slanting it and
looking at the liquid from above;
4. Next comes the swirling of
the glass. This can also seem too pretentious or even dangerous
if you have a full glass or a white top. But this movement
is important since it prepares you for the next step in wine
tasting – the Taste. The easiest way to swirl the glass
is to place it on a table or other even surface, and to swirl
your hand while holding the glass by the stem. Swirl hard
and have the wine almost touch the rim of the glass. Then
stop. The wine leaves tiny traces with irregular shapes on
the inside of the glass.
Some “experts” then
read them with as much zeal as coffee-tellers. The truth is
however, that they are just an indicator for the quality of
the wine – the more alcohol a wine has, the more wine
traces it forms.
What does the color of the wine
tell us? The wine’s color tells us many things about
its character.
First, the color shows the grape
variety. Let’s take two popular varieties as examples
– cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir. Cabernet’s
grapes are smaller, with a thicker and darker skin than those
of pinot noir. As a result, the color of wines made from cabernet
sauvignon is usually described as violet to dark while the
color of wines made from pinot noir is associated with ruby.
Second, the color is influenced
by the climatic conditions. A hot summer and dry fall result
in ripe grapes, with a dark, intense color. A cold summer
and rainy fall will produce undeveloped grapes with a lighter
color.
Third, wine-making practices
also have an influence on the color of wine. For red wine,
the grapes are fermented with the skin. Since the coloring
agents are in the grape skin, and not in the juice, the longer
the process of maceration, i.e. the longer the skin stays
with the juice, the darker the wine color will be.
Fourth, the process of wine
aging also has an influence on the color of wine. The young
red wines are rich in coloring agents and that makes their
color denser and fuller. In the course of time chemical reactions
take place in the bottle and a sediment is formed at the bottom.
The wine’s color gets lighter and is often described
as brick or amber.
Let’s go through an example:
you pour yourself a glass of red wine and after carefully
observing it, you notice a full granite color, good density,
and not so good transparency. What conclusions can you draw?
Well, you can safely say that
the wine is:
- from cabernet sauvignon grapes;
- from a Southern region;
- relatively young;
- from a good yield;
- that the wine-maker has gone for a good long maceration.
If you know the wine, compare
what you know with what you see: maybe the wine has a very
full color and the yield has been bad – this speaks
of a good wine-making technique; or maybe the wine is too
pale for its age – this speaks for undeveloped grape
or poor wine-making technique.
Wine
Tasting: Look | Wine
Tasting: Smell | Wine
Tasting: Taste
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