Wine Tasting

The Art of Tasting- The idea of this tasting case is to help you discover and learn about tasting. So, we are going to try here to pass on to you the best of our knowledge in this area.

Wine Tasting - Brief Overview

The Appearance - The initial phase of the tasting resides in a visual inspection of the wine and allows us to discern precious indications on the age and the quality of the wine by observing its colour “robe”, its intensity, its transparency and its brightness.

The Nose - The Olfactory examination is the second phase of the tasting which allows us to determinate the various aromas which are released in a wine.

The Palate - For this ultimate phase, we look for the delights of the flavours. The mouth is the territory of tastes and "touch" as the hand touches a material.

Wine Tasting - In depth

There are five basic steps in tasting wine: colour, swirl, smell, taste, and savour These are also known as the five Ss: See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, Savour. During this process, a taster must look for clarity, character, expressiveness, and complexity.

A wine's colour is better judged by putting it against a white background. Put the wine glass at an angle to see the colours, which can give the taster clues to the grape variety, and whether the wine was aged in wood.

Characteristics assessed during wine tasting

A wine taster also looks for integration, which is a state in which none of the components of the wine (acids tannin, alcohol, etc) is out of balance with the other components. When a wine is well balanced, the wine is said to have achieved a harmonious fusion.

Another important quality of the wine to look for is its expressiveness. Expressiveness is the quality the "wine possesses when its aromas and flavours are well-defined and clearly projected The complexity of the wine is affected by many factors, one of which may be its many flavours.

A wine's quality can be judged by its bouquet and taste. The bouquet is the total aromatic experience of the wine. Assessing a wine's bouquet can also reveal faults such as cork taint and oxidation due to heat overexposure, and yeast contamination.

The bouquet of wine is best revealed by gently swirling the wine in a wine glass to expose it to more oxygen and release more aromas.

Pausing to experience a wine's bouquet aids the wine taster in anticipating the wine's flavours. The "nose" - its bouquet or aroma - is the major determinate of perceived flavour in the mouth. Once inside the mouth, the aromas are further liberated by exposure to body heat, and transferred to the olfactory site. It is here that the complex taste experience characteristic of a wine actually begins.

Thoroughly tasting a wine involves perception of its array of taste and attributes, which involve the combination of textures, flavours, and overall "structure". Following appreciation of its olfactory characteristics, the wine taster savours a wine by holding it in the mouth for a few seconds. By pursing ones lips and breathing through that small opening oxygen will pass over the wine and release even moreinformation. When the wine is allowed pass slowly through the mouth it presents the taster with the fullest profile available to the human palate.

The acts of pausing and focusing through each step distinguishes wine tasting from simple quaffing. Through this process, the full array of aromas is captured and interpreted. When tasting several wines in succession, however, key aspects of this fuller experience (length and finish, or aftertaste) must be sacrificed through spiting it out.

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