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Learning to Taste: The Stages of Tasting

© Audra Ligumsky

There is a natural order to tasting wine: quite simply, sight, smell, and taste. When we pour a glass of wine for a tasting it should be 50ml. This allows for a look at the color while still having enough room to swirl the wine to release the wonderful bouquet.

Appearance: You should always check the appearance in front of a well lit white background. This allows for the proper color and clarity to be viewed. Clarity is of vital importance in a wine; cloudiness is a good indicator something is wrong. It could mean it is going through re-fermentation in the bottle or has bacterial problems. As well, old wine will be cloudy if not properly decanted.

Colour: To find the true COLOUR hold the glass at a 45% angle away from your self and against a white background. Most likely this will reveal first the body COLOUR and then a rim COLOUR.

RED wines loose their color as they age; the body of red wines get paler as they get older. The rim COLOUR can range from purple, for a young wine, to ruby, through to russet, then to brown for a mature red. Other COLOUR terminology are: tawny, garnet, brick.

WHITE wines can have a greenish tinge to their rim COLOUR when young then changes to a deep yellow before aging to a gold. New oak can also give a golden tint to a young white wine. More COLOUR terminology are: pale straw, lemon.

Some people like to look at the "legs" of a wine. These are traces left on the side of a glass when swirled around. This usually is a good indicator of alcohol content or high levels of residual sugar. Legs are often referred to a "tears".

Nose: This is where wine tasting becomes more of a individual art. After swirling the wine in the glass you should start to smell the bouquet with your nose to the glass. Your first smell should be one of caution. The second sniff should be done with great concentration. You must now take note of the intensity and certain aromas you receive. Some aromas are quite distinctive while others might need a minute to recognize. A word of caution - a musty smell might mean the wine is corked (off). Tasting the wine should confirm this.

Taste: Different parts of the tongue and gums detect different facets so it is important to expose all parts of your mouth to the wine. The back of your tongue detects bitter. The sides detect sour. The very center of the tongue detects salt and the

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