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Perfecting the art of wine tasting

A wine qualifies several criteria, including smell and taste. Here’s how to wine taste with friends, in restaurants or between specialists.

Tasting a wine is done in three steps using different senses: sight, smell and taste. Here are the steps to follow to enjoy a wine. 

Everything starts with the glass. We must hold the glass by its base, and not by its root (also known as the tulip glass) otherwise the fingerprints that we leave will interfere with appreciating the nuances of fine wine.

Then, we must begin by assessing the clarity of the wine, that is to say, its transparency.
For a white wine, it must be clear.

We will then look at the surface of the wine to assess its brilliance. For this, we must look if the wine is rather dull or whether it has a lot of glare.
A reflection of wine reflects its acidity. The more reflection in wine will be more acid to the taste.

The colour will then give us even more information, including age (young wine and old-wine) and its body.
For this, we must look at the colour at the centre of the wine (i.e.: the centre of the glass) by looking into the middle of the glass, preferably on a white background. We will in particular look at the intensity of colour. We must determine whether the colour is dark or light.
If the intensity is light, it means that the wine is generally young (white wine tends to darken with age), and it is not too concentrated, that is to say that it doesn’t have a lot of body or weight. That’s why white wine is usually drunk as an aperitif.

To be more precise about the age, look at the top of the glass, placing your hand behind. Look at the edge of wine where the wine glass surface meets. This area is called the disc.
This area is different from the colour of the wine (darker in white wine, lighter in red wine) plus the wine will be aged. This is due to oxidation (modified wine by oxygen in short time).

We will then stir the wine to determine if the wine is dry or sweet. A dry wine is a wine with some sugar, while the sweet wine has a lot of sugar.
The movement is simple, make small circles with your glass (holding it by the foot) to raise the wine to the edges of the glass.
This movement helps to highlight what is called the “legs” of wine (hence the term the wine of the thigh) or the tears of wine.
The legs of the wine will give us information on the sugar content and alcohol content of wine. A white wine is generally stable in alcohol (about 12.5°), it will directly inform us about the sugar content of wine.
Remember that the wine comes from the fermentation of grape juice in which sugar becomes alcohol.
The sugar content of wine will indicate if the wine is quite dry (low) or somewhat soft (high).
Leg locked at the top of the glass and rather thin does not have much sugar.
One leg down along the wall of glass contains lots of sugar.

Without even smelled or tasted the wine, we can already determine the age of wine, whether the wine is dry or sweet, and if it’s acidic and fresh taste.

About the Author

Daniel is an SEO content writer you can view more of his works at SEO and he enjoys his time developing forex trading systems and writing tutorials and articles about Forex and many other niches.

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