Learning to taste wine is no different than learning to really appreciate music or art in that the pleasure you receive is proportionate to the effort you make.
The ability to sniff out and untangle the subtle threads that weave into complex wine aromas is essential for tasting. Try holding your nose while you swallow a mouthful of wine; you will find that most of the flavor is muted. Your nose is the key to your palate. Once you learn how to give wine a good sniff, you’ll begin to develop the ability to isolate flavors—to notice the way they unfold and interact—and, to some degree, assign language to describe them.
Whenever you have a glass of wine in your hand, make it a habit to take a minute to stop all conversation, shut out all distraction and focus your attention on the wine’s appearance, scents, flavors and finish.
Step 1: Look
How to judge the look of a wine color and opacity of wine can give you hints as to the approximate age, the potential grape varieties, the amount of acidity, alcohol, sugar and even the potential climate (warm vs. cool) where the wine was grown.
Age: As white wines age they tend to change color towards more yellow and brown colors, increasing in overall pigment. Red wines tend to lose color, becoming more transparent as time goes on.
Alcohol and Sugar: Wine legs can tell us if the wine has high or low alcohol and/or high or low sugar.
The thicker and more viscous the legs, likely the more alcohol or residual sugar the wine has.
Step 2: Smell
How to judge the smell of wine aromas in wine nearly give away everything about a wine; from grape variety, whether or not the wine was oak-aged, where the wine is from and how old the wine is. A trained nose and palate can pick all these details out.
Wine aromas fall into 3 categories:
Primary Aromas: Primary aromas are from the type of the grape and the climate where it grows.
Secondary Aromas: Secondary aromas come from the fermentation process (the yeast). A great example of this is the “sourdough” smell that you can find in Brut Champagne that is sometimes described as “bready” or “yeasty.” Yeast aromas can also smell like old beer or cheese rind. Another common secondary aroma would be the yogurt or sour cream aroma that comes from fermentation.
Tertiary Aromas: Tertiary aromas (sometimes referred to as “bouquets”) come from aging wine. Aging aromas come from oxidation, aging in oak and/or aging in bottle over a period of time. The most common example of this is the “vanilla” aroma associated with wines aged in oak. Other more subtle examples of tertiary aromas are nutty flavors found in aged vintage Champagne. Often, tertiary aromas will modify primary aromas, with the fresh fruit of a youthful wine changing to be more dried and concentrated as it develops.
Step 3: Taste
When tasting, pay attention to:
Sweetness
Acidity
Tannin
Alcohol
Body
Sweetness:
The best way to sense sweetness is on the front of your tongue in the first moment you taste a wine.
Wines range from 0 grams per liter residual sugar (g/l RS) to about 220 g/l RS. By the way, 220 will have a consistency close to syrup!
Most people would draw line for dry wines at around 10 g/l of residual sugar, but the human threshold of perception is only 4 g/l.
Most Brut Champagne will have around 6-9 g/l RS.
Your average harmoniously sweet German Riesling has about 30 or 40 g/l.
Wines with high acidity taste less sweet than wines with low acidity, because we generally perceive the relationship between sweetness and acidity, not the individual parts. Coke has 120 g/l but tastes relatively “dry” because of how much acidity it has! Coke’s really high acid is why you can also melt teeth and hair in it. Coke’s total acidity is way higher than any wine.
Acidity:
Acidity plays a major role in the overall profile of a wine, because its the mouth-watering factor a wine has, which drives wine’s refreshment.
There are many types of acids in wine, but the overall acidity in wine is often measured in pH. Acidity is how sour a wine tastes. High acid wines are often described as “tart” or “zippy”. pH in wine ranges from 2.6 which is punishingly acidic to about 4.9 which is barely detectable as tart, because it’s much closer to the neutral 7.0 measurement.
Most wines range between 3 and 4 pH.
High acidity wines are more tart and mouth-watering. High acidity can indicate a wine from a cooler climate region or wine grapes that were picked early.
Low acidity wines tend to taste smoother and creamier, with less mouth-watering qualities.
Super low acidity wines will taste flat or flabby.
Tannin:
Tannin is a red wine characteristic and it can tell us the type of grape, if the wine was aged in oak and how long the wine could age. You perceive tannin only on your palate and only with red wines; it’s that cotton-ball- like drying sensation.
Tannin comes from 2 places: the skins and seeds of grapes or oak aging. Every grape variety has a different inherent level of tannin, depending on it’s individual character. For example, Pinot Noir has inherently low-level of tannin, whereas Cabernet has very high level.
Tannin from grape skins and seeds is typically more abrasive and can taste more green.
Tannin from oak will often taste more smooth and round. It typically hits your palate in the center of your tongue.
Tasting for oak tannin versus grape tannin is extremely difficult; don’t worry if you don’t get it right.
Alcohol:
Alcohol can sometimes tell us the intensity of a wine and the ripeness of the grapes that went into making the wine.
Alcohol level can add quite a bit of body and texture to wine.
Alcohol ranges from 5% alcohol by volume (ABV) – 16% ABV.
A sub-11% ABV table wine usually means something with a little natural sweetness.
Dry wines at 13.5% to 16% ABV are all going to be quite rich and intensely flavored.
Fortified wines are 17-21% ABV.
Alcohol level directly correlated to the sweetness of the grapes prior to fermenting the wine. For this reason, lower ABV (Sub-11%) wines will often have natural sweetness; their grape sugar wasn’t all turned into booze.
Warmer growing regions produce riper grapes which have the potential to make higher alcohol wines.
Body:
Body can give us clues to the type of wine, the region it was grown and the possible use of oak aging.
Body usually is directly related to alcohol, but think of body as how the wine “rests” on your palate.
When you swish it around in your mouth, does it feel like skim, 2%, or whole milk? That texture will roughly correspond with, light, medium, and full bodied in wine. Usually body will also correspond with alcohol, but various other processes like fermentation, oak aging or residual sugar can all give to wine additional body and texture.
Six major flower aromas in wine
Learning the major flower aromas will help you discover all the awesome nuances in wine.
Flower aromas in wine are actually from a variety of chemical compounds. For instance, the smell of geranium flowers in wine is the presence of geraniol, a terpenoid. Many wine experts talk about esters, terpenes and thiols.
Rose
A complex flower aroma in wine, rose can be found in a variety of red and white wines.
Examples: Gewürztraminer, Pinot Noir, Grenache, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo
Geranium
Considered a fault when present in high amounts because the chemical compound geraniol doesn’t occur naturally in grape must (mashed grapes before fermentation).
Examples: Muscat, Gewürztraminer, Malbec, Torrontes
Citrus Blossom
A perfumed smell that is very complex and desirable in white wines.
Examples: Riesling, Chardonnay
White Flowers (Lilly)
A subtle flowery smell that accompanies fruit flavors in white wines.
Examples: Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Muscadet
Lavender
A flower aroma found in mostly red wines, similar to rose.
Examples: Syrah, Malbec, Tempranillo, Sangiovese
Violet
The floral aroma found in fine red wines.
Examples: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Sirah, Malbec