The 4 Senses of Wine Tasting
The Sight (Part 2 of 4)


When you take a look at a glass of wine, what do you see? If it's a white wine you may see a golden or pale green hue. For reds you may see a deep purple or a garnet color. Whatever color you see realize that that color is telling you about the wine.

Let's start with white wines. Some Sauvignion Blancs and Chardonnays have a clear yellow tint that makes them appear light. Some have a deeper golden tint that makes them appear rich and complex. Dessert wines are almost always deep golden in color which typifies the style and gives hint to its high sugar content. Based on your history with wine, the color and clarity of a wine will cause you to lean towards enjoying wines that have a familiar appearance.

With reds the natural bias is similar. A cloudy megenta colored wine will bring to ming the loose sediments in the bottle and possibly poor filtering. This could also speak to a lack of decanting which is necessary for wines that are more than 8 years old. A deep purple (almost black) wine reveals the extended period of time the grape skins were left in contact with the wine during fermenting. This can also hint to the extra amount of tannins in the wine since tannins come from the grape skins, not the grape juice. A more maroon color would make you think of a fruit-forward American Merlot which is typically young, but ready to drink.

Sight also brings out another component of the wine; the legs. Legs on a wine refer to the way wine tasters judge the alcohol content ina wine. When you swirel the wine to release the bouquet you are also bringing the wine further up the sides of the glass. The wine immediately settles back to the bottom when you have finished. A think film of alcohol stays on the sides of the glass and slowly rejoins the wine. If this process happens slowly the wine has good legs. Key Note: The more time the alcohol takes to rejoin the bottom, the higher the alcohol content in the wine.

NEXT Month - The Smell (aka Bouquet) (Part 3 of 4)
How the aromas of the wine affect what you think you will taste.


Review LAST Month - The Touch (Part 1 of 4)
Your initial exposure to a glass of wine.
 


How To Taste Wine
Tasting wine requires one fundamental practice; PATIENCE. When you taste a wine you need to take your time and use your senses to taste the wine. Basically, when you taste wine with the Wet Cork Wine Club you will be able to:

1. Look at the wine and rate its color and clarity.

2. Swirl the wine in the glass and release the aroma/bouquet. Smell it. What does it make you think of? Note this feeling, this memory, this scent. Check the vocabulary list below.

3. You may want to close your nose for this, but now taste the wine. What effect does it have on your tongue? You will first taste the sweetness. Then you will taste the bitterness. Then you will taste the other complexities in the wine. Use the list below to choose your adjectives.

4. Taste the wine again, but this time, take a bigger swig and wash it in your mouth. This will allow you to get more exposure to the wine by making it contact all of the areas in your mouth. Now you may find other qualities in the wine. In addition, you will be able to judge the finish of the wine.

Improve Your Vocabulary With Common Wine Terms

We actually smell most of the things that we think we taste, or so the scientists say. Our poor taste buds can discern only four flavors - sweet, sour, salt and bitter - while our noses are capable of distinguishing thousands of subtle variations.

The wines of the world offer thousands of scents in their almost infinite variety. As an aid to novice wine tasters - and experts too - the wine scientists at the University of California at Davis, one of the nation's leading wine-making and grape-growing schools, came up years ago with something called the "aroma wheel." The oenologists at Davis consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine for the smells of wine. Then they organized them, categorized them, eliminated all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear, and ended up with a list of 12 major categories of wine smells, subdivided into 29 subcategories and in 94 specific terms.

You don't need a wheel to get rolling, however: The information is just as useful in the form of a list, starting at noon and moving around the clock from "fruity" through "nutty" and "earthy" around to "floral"," "spicy and back to fruity again.

If you want to get more out of your wine, try your next tasting session with the list at hand, scanning the categories in search of the exact word to describe what you're smelling.

Note: This list has been edited to save space, leaving out some of the more obscure and technical terms.

FRUITY: Citrus - grapefruit, lemon; berry - blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, black currant (cassis); tree fruit - cherry, apricot, peach, apple; tropical fruit - pineapple, melon, banana; dried fruit - strawberry jam, raisins, prune, fig.

VEGETATIVE: fresh - stemmy, cut green grass, bell pepper, eucalyptus, mint; canned-cooked - green beans, asparagus, green olive, black olive, artichoke; dried - haw-straw, tea, tobacco.

NUTTY: walnut, hazelnut, almond.

CARAMELIZED: honey, butterscotch, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, molasses.

WOODY: vanilla, cedar, oak, smoky, burnt toast, charred, coffee.

EARTHY: dusty, mushroom, musty (mildew), moldy cork.

CHEMICAL: petroleum - tar, plastic, kerosene, diesel; sulfur - rubbery, garlic, skunk, cabbage, burnt match, wet wool, wet dog; papery - wet cardboard; pungent - acetic acid (vinegar); other - soapy, fishy.

PUNGENT: hot - alcohol; cool - menthol.

MICROBIOLOGICAL: yeast, sauerkraut, sweaty, horsey, "mousey."

FLORAL: orange blossom, rose, violet, geranium.

SPICY: cloves, black pepper, licorice, anise.

This is an Article Summary from "Wine Lover's Page" - Online Wine Tasting Course - Tasting on the Wheel (http://www.wineloverspage.com/taste/wheel.phtml)

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