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Wine tasting refers to the sensory examination and evaluation of wine. It is an ancient practise, though in recent years a formalised methodology has become more established. Sommeliers and wine buyers use a constantly changing, formal terminology to describe the range of flavours, aromas and general characteristics they perceive of a wine.
The quality assessment of a wine is more objective when performed alongside several other wines, in what is known as “tasting flights”. A tasting flight is a term used by tasters to describe a selection of wines – usually between three and eight glasses – used for sampling and comparison. An extended tasting will typically comprise several flights, each with a theme.
Wines can be deliberately selected for their vintage – horizontal tasting – or come from a single winery – vertical tasting. Vertical and horizontal tastings are arranged to highlight differences between similar wines. In a vertical tasting, different vintages of the same wine type from the same winery are tasted. This highlights differences between vintages. In a horizontal tasting, the wines tasted are all from the same vintage, but originate from different wineries. Keeping wine region, variety and type consistent helps emphasise differences in producer styles.
To promote unbiased analysis of the wines, a “blind” tasting can be performed. A blind tasting is when the taster has neither seen the label and shape of the bottle, nor has any details regarding its price, geographic origin, reputation, colour or other important characteristics.
When tasting, it is important to pay attention to the order in which one samples the wines. Heavy or sweet wines dominate lighter ones, and can skew the taster’s assessment. Thus, wines should be tasted in this order: sparkling wines, light whites, heavy whites, light reds, heavy reds, and sweet wines. Heavy wines are generally deeper in colour and have a more intense nose. Sweeter wines, being denser, will leave viscous streaks – called legs – down the inside of the glass when it is swirled.
There are five basic steps to tasting wine, namely colour, swirling, smell, taste, savour – also known as the five Ss, see, swirl, sniff, sip, and savour. Here, the taster looks for clarity, varietal character, integration, expressiveness, complexity and connectedness.
Judging colour is the first step in wine tasting, as colours can give the taster clues about the grape variety, and whether the wine was or was not aged in wood. Varietal character describes how much a wine presents its inherent grape aromas. Integration is a state in which none of the components of the wine are out of balance with each other. Expressiveness is the quality the wine possesses when its aromas and flavours are well defined and clearly projected, while the complexity of the wine is affected by many factors. The connectedness of the wine – a rather abstract and difficult to determine quality – is how connected the bond between the wine and its land of origin may be.
The quality of a wine can be judged by its taste and bouquet, the latter revealed by gently swirling the liquid in the glass. Assessing the bouquet also reveals faults such as cork taint, oxidation and yeast contamination. The “nose” of a wine is the major determinate of perceived flavour in the mouth. Once inside the mouth, the aromatics are liberated through exposure to body heat. They are transferred retronasally to the olfactory receptor site, where the complex taste experience characteristic of a wine begins. Following appreciation of its olfactory characteristics, the wine taster savours a wine by holding it in the mouth for a few seconds to saturate the taste buds, perhaps swirling it in the mouth as well. The taster then either spits it out, or swallows it. Through this process, the full array of aromatic molecules is captured and interpreted by roughly 15 million olfactory receptors.
When tasting a wine there are five principal elements to look for, namely dryness/sweetness, acidity, tannin, oak and fruit.
- Dryness/sweetness – the amount of natural sugar a wine contains is perhaps its most easily-noted attribute.
- Acidity – there are numerous types of acid in wine, the most important being tartaric. Good acidity is necessary to contribute a feeling of freshness to a young wine, and to help the best wine to age. Beware of confusing dryness with acidity, however.
- Tannin – is present in the stalks and seeds of fresh grapes, as well as in the skins. Since the colour in red wine comes from the skins, some tannin is inevitably extracted along with it. In the mouth, tannins give that furry, dry feeling, though they disappear gradually as a wine matures in the bottle.
- Oak – many wines are matured in oak barrels, and may even have gone through their initial fermentation in oak; the flavour imparted to them by contact with the wood. An aroma or taste of vanilla or other sweet spice such as nutmeg or cinnamon is a strong indicator of the presence of oak, as is an overall feeling of creamy smoothness on the palate.
- Fruit – wines are describes as tasting of raspberries, melon, cherries, tobacco, cut grass, and green pepper to name but a few descriptors. There are actually biochemical reasons for the resemblance of wines to the flavours of other foods.
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