Wine Tasting Guide

While figuring out the effectiveness of a wine, you need to consider specific factors such as the smell of the wine, its appearance and the particular sensation or feeling that you get after tasting the wine.

The Smell Of Wine

Spend a little time in evaluating whether the wine has a pleasant or clean smell or if it sends off a bad odor? To sniff the wine in a better way, just whirl it in the glass so that its aromas are released in the air. Now, if you sniff the wine, you would get a clear understanding of how the wine really smells like and while sniffing, you may get the smell of any of the these objects: peaches, grapes, fruit, flowers, apples, oak, grass, raspberries, lemon, vanilla et al.

The Appearance Of Wine

The appearance of a wine lies in its color as well as transparency. With time, white wines attain a dark color and red wines are found to undergo fading and from deep purple, they start attaining a brick color. You can evaluate the color of a wine in the best possible way by positioning it against a white background, i.e. a piece of paper and a tablecloth.

However, the viscosity of a wine also forms a part of its appearance and if the viscosity or “legs” of the wine moves slowly when it is swirled inside the glass it signifies that the wine possesses a strong and dense flavor. Therefore, if a red wine has slow moving legs, you can be certain that it is a mature wine.

Taste Of The Wine

Only through wine tasting, you would get to know that whether the wine is effective for consumption or not. Just take a sip of the wine and twirl it inside the mouth so that it touches almost all portions of the mouth, namely the soft palate, gums and tongue. You can also push the head forward so that the wine covers the area behind the front teeth and this would help you to taste the wine in an effective manner.

In this way, the specific taste of the wine that you experience in your mouth would be able to inform you if it is full-bodied, medium-bodied or light-bodied wine. Once the wine is tasted, you would get to know the alcohol, acidity, sweetness and tannin content of the wine. In a good quality wine, all these essentials come together.  But if one of these components predominates the wine, it is up to a professional wine taster to find out that whether the dominance is a weakness or if the dominance is thoroughly acceptable in the tested wine.
As you start tasting wine, you should focus on the acidity of the wine, its sweetness, the amount of tannin or alcohol present in the wine and also should try to evaluate the taste of the fruit (from which the wine is prepared) in the mouth.

Acidity Of Wine

Acid is considered to be a vital component of a wine that makes it stimulating. If there is lesser amount of acid in a wine, it is termed as flabby wine and larger acid content adds a lemony taste to the wine. In both cases, the wine is undrinkable, i.e. larger/lesser acid content in a wine can spoil its taste. So, there should be balanced amount of acid in a wine and all delicious red/white wines contain a satisfactory level of acid in them.

Sweetness Of Wine

While tasting wine, the sensation that you feel in your tongue will let you know whether the wine is sweet or not. If you find that sugar is absent in the wine, it can be termed as a dry wine.

Tannin Or Alcohol Present In Wine

Just by tasting wine, you get to know the amount of tannin or alcohol available in the wine. Tannin is a preservative that is naturally available in grape stalks and skins. Tannin functions as a chief preservative in high quality red wines and young red wines containing tannin taste dry in the mouth.

If a bottle of wine contains a significantly higher amount of alcohol, you will develop a burning sensation after tasting the wine. For a wine to taste good, it should contain a moderate amount of alcohol as well as other essential ingredients.

Taste Of The Fruit

The taste and intensity of the fruit (from which the wine is made) is a proper indication of the quality of the wine. If the fruit tastes good, then the wine is of high-quality. In some cases, the younger wines are found to provide better fruit taste than mature wines.