How to wine taste



Posted: Monday, July 07, 2008

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Many people assume that wine tasting is sipping, swishing, and swallowing. You will be amazed to find that it’s actually a bit more than that. Wine tasting is an art that is used to distinguish the taste of fine wines. Wine can be tasty and refreshing if the bottle was stored correctly and aged properly.

Wine tasting begins with the swishing. The reason wine tasters swish the wine around in their mouths is to get the taste. The front and the back areas of the tongue contain taste buds, although neither one has any distinct sensation in taste. Your taste buds can detect food and liquid that is bitter, salty or sweet, without a problem. To get the proper taste from wine, the swishing allows your taste buds and sense of smell to bring out the unique, fine flavours in the wine.

When you have a cold however, the wine can taste very different. Your sense of smell has a major impact on the taste. What many fail to realize, is that over 75% of our taste is due to our sense of smell. When we have a cold, our sense of smell is affected. So when eating or tasting wine with a cold, the taste will appear different. Wine tasters all over the world will tell you that tasting wine is more about a sense of smell than the actual taste buds.

Wine tasting is indeed an art. Wine tasters follow some general guidelines and rules that judge how great a wine is. These techniques can help you bring the most out of your wine, providing you follow them to bring out the taste.

The first thing to do with wine is to look. You can tell quite a bit about wine by looking at it. Start by pouring the wine into a clear glass, then taking a few minutes to look at its colour. White wines aren’t white, but actually yellow, green, or brown. Red wines on the other hand are normally a pale red or dark brown colour. Red wine gets better with age, while white wine gets staler with age.

Next, is the smell of the wine, which you should do in two steps. Start with a brief smell to get a general idea of the wine, then take a deep, long smell. This deeper smell should allow you take in the flavour of the wine in. The more experienced wine tasters prefer to sit back a bit and think about the smell before they actually taste the wine.

Lastly, is to taste the wine. Take a sip, swish it around in your mouth, then swallow. Once you swish the wine around in your mouth, you’ll bring out the rich and bold flavours of the wine. After swallowing, you’ll be able to distinguish the after taste of the wine, and the overall flavour.

Once you have looked at the wine, smelt it, and tasted it, you’ll be able to evaluate the wine from a taster’s standpoint. This is the easiest way to determine the quality of the wine, and whether or not it has been properly stored and aged. As with all things in life the more you taste the better you will get at distinguishing the unique flavours.
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