Wine tastings and tasting rooms can be intimidating to people that don’t know much about wine. Trying several different wines in a short period of time can lead to the wines running together and may cause you to overlook a very good wine.
Luckily, there are several easy steps that you can take to get the most out of the tasting, and whether you feel like it or not, these steps will make you look like you know what you are doing. Wine is a drink that plays on four of your senses- sight, smell, taste, and touch (some would argue that touch and taste are pretty much the same with wine, but I think they’re different).
The first sense that you have to engage is sight. Look at the wine in the glass, and if possible, look at it in the light with a white back drop so you can get a clear picture of what the wine looks like. Is it cloudy, clear, watery, evenly colored, etc.? You’re not likely to want to drink a wine that is visually unappealing (I’m talking about a brown wine, or a wine with chunks of sediment or cork in it). Now, make a quick mental note about the color and move onto the next step, smell.
Smell is what throws most people off when talking about wine. Most wine critics will list off 5 or 6 aromas that they detect on the wine, but for the most part, casual drinkers will only be able to get one or two. The important thing to remember when smelling a wine is to not be shy. Swirl the wine around in your cup energetically because the more the air gets in there and opens up the wine, the easier it will be to discern scents. Secondly, get your nose in the glass and take several short, deep sniffs. Repeat as necessary. Some people claim that smelling a wine with one nostril at a time will help you detect different scents, but I haven’t found this to be the case with me. Talk about what you smell with the person conducting your tasting or your tasting companions, bouncing thoughts off of each other and re-assessing will help you make a more complete assessment of the wine’s aroma/bouquet. Don’t be thrown off if someone smells something that you can’t or if you detect something that no one else does. This doesn’t mean you’re wrong, just that something else jumped out at you. Again, make notes in your mind and move on to the next step.
Taste and touch may seem like interchangeable words with a liquid because the only touching of the wine you are doing is with your mouth, the mouth that also tastes. I argue that they are both independently applicable to wine drinking because a wine’s tastes will be different than a wine’s feel in your mouth. Think about it, wine can taste like fruit, like spice, etc. But, wine can also feel round, sharp, acidic (stinging), tannic (dry your mouth, make you pucker). Look at it this way, for your first sip of the wine, play with it on your tongue and try to get an accurate read on the tastes in the wine. Again, this may be a tough and intimidating task, but just think about anything that comes to mind. There are times that I’ve pretty accurately described a wine by comparing them to a person, car, movie, or other completely unrelated object. Wine will taste like some combination of spice and fruit, etc. but these tastes are often hard to describe, so thinking about it in terms that are more comfortable to you will help. Again, bounce ideas off of your friends and people working there. For your next taste of wine, roll it around in your mouth for a good 10-15 seconds. Still be alert for tastes while doing this, but more so than that, get a feel for how the wine feels in different parts of your mouth. Does it sting your mouth, does it dry up your mouth, and does it make your mouth water? Think about these different aspects. This is what I think of as the feel of a wine. A wine that is too acidic, too tannic, too alcoholic, etc. can be a sign that the wine is too old, too young, or just poorly made. For this reason, I think that touch is an important part of the wine tasting process.
Take all of these factors into account when tasting wine. This seems like a chore at first, but with just a bit of practice, it will enhance your understanding of the wine and will hopefully help you remember it better so you can compare it to others that you will taste and begin to build up a mental library of wines tasted. And, on tasting trips, it will help you decide which wines to buy and which ones to pass up.
This is a lot to do, especially when tasting 5+ wines at a winery, and multiply that by the 5+ wineries you can visit on a single weekend trip, and even for an experienced drinker, that can be too much to remember. So, one tip is to take notes. Every tasting room I’ve been to has had a list of the wines that they taste, printed out on a piece of paper that you can take notes on/keep if you want to. Be sure to pick one of these up. Also, ask for a pen or pencil (or carry your own) so that you can make notes. The helpful thing about the tasting notes provided by the winery is that they will already have some of the important information on them, so just fill in with your own personal notes. Also, when planning a trip, do a bit of research beforehand. Pick out wineries that you want to visit, research varietals to keep an eye out for in a particular region, etc. Have a game plan. Lastly, don’t be afraid to spit. Wine does have alcohol in it, so consuming too much can not only make you incapable of driving, it can impair your senses and make it impossible to taste anything meaningful or remember anything about the wine. Tasting rooms have spittoons that you can use whenever. It isn’t rude and it won’t offend the people working there. It is protocol. In Europe, people spit on the floor of wineries, it’s just what you do. Get a good taste of the wine and calmly spit into the designated area. If you look like you know what you are doing, no one will ever question you. Basically, just do it and don’t make it a big deal.
Hopefully this will take a bit of the edge off of the intimidating situation that is wine tasting. Remember the goal in tasting is to learn more and find out about stuff you like. At the end of the day, your taste is the only one that matters, so don’t be intimidated by people that may seem to know more than you. You always know more about your palate than even the most accomplished wine critic.
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