How to Taste Wine – an Introduction
I am not a sommelier (heck I had to Google the spelling of it) nor am I any sort of wine expert. I have taken a few courses here and there and consumed a number of bottles but my overall experience is fairly pedestrian.
It’s often that I hear (and I remember saying), “I don’t know much about wine – I like it but I don’t do all that ‘fancy’ stuff people do to taste” or “I can’t taste all those things that people claim to.” In my experience, these two things are often connected.
Tasting wine can be intimidating when you start – I am hoping that sharing my relatively low expertise may remove some of the intimidation. My first experience with formal tasting was anything but glamorous. I was attending College for Travel and Tourism. The school offered wine tasting which sounded like a lot of fun and a good excuse to get drunk at school; or so my 19-year old mind rationalized. We paid our $15 to get tickets.
The school became concerned about drinking and driving. Our school was in the middle of the country and there was no public transportation back and forth (this didn’t seem to bother them on pub nights but wine appeared to be the drink of the devil). There was talk about cancelling the entire deal and a lot of scandal.
A peaceful accord was struck before the riots started; though it felt like a low blow for a teenager. “Tomorrow’s Wine tasting has been moved from 3:00PM to 6:30AM.” Early mornings are the ultimate weapon when battling youth – it’s like sun vs. a vampire; the same side will always win. There were no refunds as financial commitments had been made to the wine makers.
It was in that first real exposure to wine that I learned two things:
- I liked Merlot (more at the time than now)
- Coffee and wine are a really tough combination but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.
It was many years later that I actually learned to taste wine and the day I learned that ‘all the fancy stuff experts do’ actually isn’t all that fancy, is rather scientific and will forever change how you appreciate wine.
Consider the following:
- Up to 90% of our taste comes from smell.
- Your tongue has at least four major zones of taste buds; each specializes in a range of tastes.
- Many recognize that how food looks on a plate can change how we preceive it’s taste
- Pouring a glass of wine into your mouth and swallowing may not be the best way all of your senses to properly capture the tastes contained within the bottle; it actually bypasses most of these items above. Proper tasting accounts and maximizes each of these things; even if it looks a little odd.
You don’t need to be an expert to ‘properly’ taste wine; you simply have to engage the most of your senses that you possibly can.
The essentials of wine tasting comprises of 3 basic steps (some break this down further):
- The look (sight)
- The smell (smell)
- The taste (vision)
I’m heading out-of-town this weekend – each day will feature a post on each step. I assure you if you haven’t done “the fancy stuff” before, you will be stunned on what happens to the flavors of a bottle with a few simple (and even discreet) steps.
If you don’t like wine (and if so, I’m amazed you’re still reading), you may also find that it’s worth an extra effort if you haven’t tried this before. More on that when we talk about taste.