How to taste and describe wine
Let me tell you about how should taste wine in my way:
1. Look
Start with the color in the glass. Will wine color give us any useful information? Of course yes, and even more often than one might think.
Start with how clean the color is. Is it cloudy, a sign that the wine is unfiltered. Maybe a white wine is brownish or has an intense deep yellow color that probably condition to oxidation and generally bad fruit aromas close to their way out from best quality?
None of the above is certain, but it gives us clues to be suspicious of the next stage.
So always give it a good look.
2. Aroma
If you are one of the village crazies who swirls their glass for hours, sniffing endlessly, and
enjoying the magical aromas of your wine, … I sympathize!
But what do I generally look for in this step:
Intensity: in other words, how strong is the aroma I am smelling? Is it immediately extrovert like a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or a well-made Greek Muscat, or is it mildly aromatic and elegant like a Kalecik Karasi from Ankara?!
Complexity: Smell extensively. Smell again. How many aromas can you recognize? In a cheap white wine do you find a little lemon, or at best a little more of white peach? Then, you take a deep breath and immediately find two or three different fruits, some sweet spices from the oak, and much tertiary aromas from the aging, like mushrooms or forest floor after rain. So there you have it: You have the definition of a complex wine.
3. Palate
Here we have even more to review:
Sweetness: is the wine completely dry, does it have a hint of sugar and is semi-dry, or is it semi-sweet and sweet?
Acidity: is the wine quite sour like a Santorini or a Rhoditis, is it moderately sour like mostreds, or just short of medium like a Viognier or a Preknadi? Set a five-point scale, and rate the sharpness!
Tannins : Most reds, but also some whites, have that astringent feel that we like so much when they pair with a protein and balance our meal. So initially, we have to quantify them in terms of their feel.
Alcohol: It’s not that hard to figure out how much alcohol a wine has, but we still don’t really care. What is useful is to classify the feeling of alcohol. Is it well integrated into the wine and goes unnoticed, or does it give off a warm sensation?
Body: A favorite debate of wine lovers everywhere, which repeatedly (wrongly) also defines a quality index for the wine being tasted. It is the sensation of how thick and full the contents of the glass feel in the mouth.
Is it thin like skimmed milk, or is it medium like semi skimmed milk or full body like a full fat milk.
4. Finish: A great indicator of quality! When we taste a wine, and swallow it, how long will we have the taste in our mouth? Will it disappear immediately like it always does in bulk, or
will it stay there for (perhaps) whole minutes like a good Bogazkere from Elazig?
These are the basic categories, and anyone who wants to indulge more can put into playdetailed descriptions of perfume groups, or talk about texture, oily or creamy.
And Dont forget always enjoy the wine with best company