Once you have been bitten by the wine enthusiast bug, the next logical step is to experience the varied range of world wines by refining your approach to wine tasting. By adopting a structured method to wine tasting including the keeping of notes, you can soon build up an impressive knowledge of wine. Although essentially a subjective pastime, you need not do the wine tasting on your own, and wine tasting parties are a great way to experience and compare various wines with your pals. Indeed there has been a growth in specific wine tasting clubs and on-line wine tasting clubs.
Everything I believe and write about wine and wine tasting is passionately motivated by one thing - the belief that wine exists solely for our enjoyment. From the cheapest bottle to the most expensive, from the rarest to the household name, there is no point in ever buying a bottle of wine unless your intention is to enjoy it. Wine tasting allows this enjoyment to have its voice, but sometimes it can be clouded through wine snobbery and allied pretentiousness.
When watching a wine taster, all the sniffing, slurping and spitting may seem over the top, but these are all methods of releasing as much character as possible from the wine. Just try sipping a little wine, and, without smelling it first, swallow it immediately. The result will be little or no sense of flavours or aroma. Now take another sip, but before you do, swirl the wine around the glass, get your nose close to it and take a big sniff or two. Then swirl the wine around your mouth before swallowing. Immediately you will experience more aroma and flavour from the same wine that offered nothing when gulped down before.
So that's the basics of wine tasting and the process used by wine critics, who seem to make this simple process very elaborate. Wine tasting involves sight, smell, and of course taste. Moving back to wine tasting, the first process is to look at the wine, determining its colour, clarity and density. Appearance counts for a lot; e.g. with red wines a bluey tint indicates a youthful wine, while a terracotta hue indicates age. With white wines a deep golden colour might mean that it is sweet, or oak-aged, whilst a very pale, watery white means that it will be dry and unoaked. Now, after swirling, take your big sniffs and dissect the aroma - is it fruity or spicy? Rich or light? Can you smell fruit or other things within the perfume, such as oakiness or grassiness or is it flowery or peppery? When describing these elements in your wine tasting notes, you must build up your own reference points' thus identifying what makes the wine appealing to you.
Take a similar approach to the actual wine tasting - take a small sip and slosh the wine around your mouth, even dragging a bit of air through the liquid to release even more flavour. Now think about the wines texture - thick or thin? Watery or rich? - as well as its fruity character and any other characteristics like high acidity, oakiness or a powerful chewy structure from a high tannin count. After spitting out the wine decide whether the wine has an appealing finish -exciting flavours - or was it dull.
Now you can make a considered appreciation of the wine using wine tasting notes. Decide whether you would have a second glass and if so how much you would pay for it. To make the wine tasting more appealing invite some friends around for a wine tasting party, compare your tastings and remember that noone is right or wrong. There are also wine tasting clubs that undertake wine tasting tours, such as Central Coast wine tasting or wine tasting Italy tours. Most of all enjoy your wine tasting - throw a wine tasting party, employ exciting wine party ideas and your personalised wine tasting kit, and keep copious wine tasting notes. Enjoy!
