8 simple tips to taste wine

Wine can be acomplex subject, and there are fundamentals every wine drinker should understand; none moreso than how to taste wine. So grab your favorite bottle of wine, and pour a generous amount of the good stuff in a respectable wine glass and let’s get educated:wine glass in hand, you must first learn to appreciate the subtle beauty of wine.

1 Swirl the wine in your glass. This is to increase the surface area of the wine by spreading it over the inside of the glass allowing them to escape from solution and reach your nose. It also allows some oxygen into the wine, which will help its aromas open up.

2 Note the wine’s viscosity – how slowly it runs back down the side of the glass – while you’re swirling. More viscous wines are said to have “legs,” and are likely to be more alcoholic. Outside of looking pretty, this has no relation to a wine’s quality but may indicate a more full bodied wine.

3 Sniff the wine. Initially you should hold the glass a few inches from your nose. Then let your nose go into the glass. What do you smell?

4 Take a sip of wine, but do not swallow yet. Roll the wine around in your mouth exposing it to all of your taste buds. You will only be able to detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (think: meaty or savory). Pay attention to the texture and other tactile sensations such as an apparent sense of weight or body.

5 Aspirate through the wine: With your lips pursed as if you were to whistle, draw some air into your mouth and exhale through your nose. This liberates the aromas for the wine and allows them to reach your nose where they can be detected. The nose is the only place where you can detect a wine’s aromas. However, the enzymes and other compounds in your mouth and saliva alter some of a wine’s aromatic compounds. By aspirating through the wine, you are looking for any new aromas liberated by the wine’s interaction with the environment of your mouth.

6 Take another sip of the wine, but this time (especially if you are drinking a red wine) introduce air with it. In other words, slurp the wine (without making a loud slurping noise, of course). Note the subtle differences in flavor and texture.

7 Stemware comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. The more experienced wine drinkers and connoisseurs often enjoy wines out of stemware or bulbs that are tailor-made for a specific varietal. When starting out, there is a basic rule of thumb; larger glasses for reds, and smaller glasses for whites and even for home decor.

8 Lastly, take notes – After taking time to taste the wine write some notes on the wine like the acid, fruit, alcohol, and tannin levels, as well as the aroma, flavors and overall personal rank. If you enjoyed the wine you may want to note the wine producer and year .

Using these 8 simple wine tasting techniques will ensure that you can enjoy all different types of wine and build up the memory to recognise aromas and flavours, which you can use over and over again to assess the wine through looking, smelling and tasting.