Wine Tasting 101: Learning the Art of Wine Tasting
Wines tasting party is the perfect place to try out your wine tasting skills as well as learn from veteran wine connoisseurs. Wine tasting, contrary to what is usually thought, and is not a lot of people standing around looking chic while sipping, swishing and eying glasses of Napa Valley wines. It is actually an art form that requires a sharp sense of smell, taste, and an eye for the sublime. Mastering the techniques of professional wine tasting can take a great deal of practice and there is always some new technique to learn.
The art of wine tasting is used to distinguish fine wines and relies on a trained palate, often acquired over many years. If stored properly and aged correctly, wine can be an exquisite experience.
Wine tasting is totally dependent upon our sense of smell with more than 3/4 of the impact on our senses tied to the smell prior to even beginning to taste it. Most wine lovers will retell the experiencing of a fine wine and speak more of the wonderful aroma and then the taste. After the smell, it becomes the personal preference of the wine taster.
Proper wine tasting is initiated with the swishing that is most familiar to novices. The purpose of this activity is to circulate the taste of the wine by moving it between the front and back areas of the mouth in order to reach the taste buds contained in the tongue.
Taste buds are called into action; the olfactory senses are sent into overdrive and through a carefully implemented wine tasting design, wine connoisseurs not only identify the beverage, but can usually figure out the quality of the wine from the aromatic wafting of the beverage. This can be ascertained early on in the wine tasting process.
Understanding the fundamentals of swishing allows the connoisseur to move on to the three basic principles of the art of judging a fine wine – observing, smelling, and finally tasting.
Wine should ideally be served in a crystal clear glass so that the delicate color and hue are not distorted by the color of the glass. This allows the first step, observation, to be fully realized. With the sample, a wine connoisseur can take a leisurely approach to examining the wine. This is part of the process, taking a deliberately slow look to see if any imperfections in color and hue can be seen. For instance, White wines actually are not white. They range in color from a golden, pale brown to a shade of light green. Red wine is, by contrast, darker with a pink hue and can run the gamut between a dark pinkish color to a darker brown color.
After observation, the next step involves the olfactory senses or smell. This is a two-step process with a purpose. The first step is to take a quick sniff to get the general aroma of the wine. This is followed by a deep, extended inhalation that allows the wine taster to experience the full aroma at length.
Wine experts will usually let the aroma waft over them as they reflect on the total experience of the wine up to that point.
In the end, the wine connoisseur will be ready to start tasting the wine, first by taking a sip then swishing it around to detect both the bold and subtle flavor in the sample. It is only after this step is accomplished will the wine taster fully savor the flavor and swallow the sip taken.
Completing these steps of observation, smell and finally tasting the wine, is essential to discerning the quality of the wine from the wine connoisseur’s viewpoint. The three-step process is the most complete way to ascertain age, storage, and overall quality of the wine, if it is ready to be consumed and if the wine cellar storage was adequate to bring the wine to proper fruition. As it is with any skill acquired, practice makes perfect and in evaluating wine, this is no exception. In order to become adept at evaluating the uniqueness and flavor of the sample presented takes time and effort.
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