In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to taste wine. It’s the third episode in the series. If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to listen to the first two episodes, where we learn: what is wine and how to make wine.
Just before we start, I’d also encourage you to join the club for free and learn about wine the easy way. And please take a few seconds to give this podcast 5 stars if you’re on Apple Podcasts.
Now that the plug is out of the way, let’s look at how to taste wine, or how to drink wine? You’ve surely been to wine fairs before. Have you ever found yourself standing right next to a tasting professional at a stand? They swirled the glass, strange noises came out of their mouth, and they looked transported. Then they squinted and said a few words met with an approving silence. If you felt lost standing there, don’t worry, that’s over now.
In the same way, you’re probably wondering how to recognise an acidic wine? What are tannins? Good news: you’re in the right place to learn all that.
In short, the days when you bought wine because you liked the label are over.
Learning to taste wine is crucial. Having theoretical knowledge about wine is very important, but if you don’t know how to drink it, that knowledge won’t be much use to you. So let’s get to it.
We’ll start by learning how to taste wine properly, but also how to describe it well. So by the end of this episode, you’ll be able to describe your wine perfectly. Stick around until the end, we’ve got a little bonus for you.
Tasting the wine
First, let’s taste the wine. The word “taste” could be reductive here. We only drink wine with the mouth, but there’s a whole tasting ritual that calls on all your senses to let you fully enjoy the wine. When it’s time to taste the wine, three steps matter:
- The visual exam
- The smell exam
- The taste exam
The visual exam
Let’s start with the visual exam. The first thing to examine is the colour of the wine. This exam already lets you tell the difference between white wine and red wine. Nothing complicated so far. However, there are many shades of colour. A white wine can be: green, lemon, gold, or straw. A red wine, for its part, can be: purple (a very dark red), then cherry, garnet, tile-red, or amber. Note that for red wine, you examine the intensity of the colour.
Finally, you may notice some sediment, but that’s very rare. Decanting the wine helps avoid it during your tasting. We have a very good article on decanting wine that you can read after this episode if the subject interests you.
Now that you’ve examined the wine visually, let’s move on to the smell exam.
The smell exam
It’s time to smell the wine. You can smell the wine a first time. This quick exam will let you immediately spot the faults in the wine. A tip: a smell of cork in the wine or of glue is rarely a good sign.
Next, swirl the wine in your glass. The aim of this movement is to get the wine moving and so release its aromas. Then smell the wine. You can smell it at different points in the glass to capture the range of aromas present.
To describe what you smell, there are families of aromas. Among these families you’ll find:
- Fruit, with for example apple, peach, pear, cherry
- Flowers, with violet, jasmine, or rose
- Vegetal notes like cut grass, hay, thyme, mushroom, undergrowth
- Woody notes with dry wood or oak
- Animal notes with leather, game, or fur
- Empyreumatic notes with smoke, coffee, or toast
- Spice with cinnamon, liquorice, pepper, or vanilla
- Mineral notes with iodine, petrol, flint
- And balsamic notes with pine or resin
All these scents can be hard to recognise. What’s more, some aromas can be mixed with others. Train yourself gradually to smell what’s in your glass of wine. A piece of advice often given is to close your eyes when you smell the wine to help you really focus on what the aromas remind you of.
If you really want to go further on recognising aromas in wine, you can get hold of Le Nez du Vin. It’s a real bible that will let you train yourself. The full version is a bit pricey, but you can find smaller versions.
Drinking the wine
Now that you’ve followed all these steps, it’s time to drink the wine.
First, how do you taste the wine? Put the wine in your mouth. There are then two schools of tasting. The first is to grumer the wine, that is, to draw a stream of air into your mouth while you taste the wine. This method oxygenates the wine even more and lets it deliver all its aromas. The second method is to chew the wine. To do this, just leave the wine in your mouth for a while, as if you were chewing food. By doing this, you’ll automatically release saliva and so taste the wine even better. Of course, these two methods aren’t mutually exclusive, and you can use both.
Let’s now examine what you have in your mouth:
- First, sugar: to describe the sugar in wine, you can use a scale starting with dry, then off-dry, medium-sweet, sweet.
- Acidity: acidity can be low, medium, or high. To spot acidity in wine, you can look at how much saliva you produce once you’ve swallowed the wine. If you produce a lot of saliva after tasting, the wine is highly acidic.
- Tannins: the level of tannins can be low, medium, or high. A wine that’s too tannic can be astringent. Tannins can only be commented on for red wine. There are no tannins in white wines. Tannins come from the wine’s vinification and ageing. If you don’t know what tannins are and why white wines have no tannins, head to episode 2: how to make wine.
- Body: it can be light, medium, or full. Here you’re assessing how the wine behaves in your mouth. Some wines are very light while others can be a little heavy in the mouth. You then feel much more substance.
Spitting the wine
Finally, you can spit the wine out. You don’t have to, of course, it depends on the situation. However, if you go to professional tastings or to fairs, we’d advise doing it. By spitting the wine out, you’ll be able to taste a lot more and so fully enjoy your tasting.
Once the wine is spat out or swallowed, you can assess the length in the mouth. The length in the mouth refers to how long you keep getting sensations from the wine in your mouth. It’s a particularly incredible sensation to experience and often the mark of the greatest wines.
Hearing to taste wine
You can also use your ear to get information about the wine. You thought that was impossible? Here’s a surprise. By bringing the glass to your ear, you might hear small bubbles you couldn’t see. That’s a good way to check whether the wine is still. Some natural wines can make a very pleasant little sound.
Assessing the wine
At the end of all these steps, you need to assess the wine. For some people, it’s a full-time job, as it was for Robert Parker: a very famous critic, now retired.
For us, it’s mainly about answering a few questions: do I like this wine? Am I willing to pay its price? It’s up to you to decide on the answers, but we’ve given you the keys to answer them as well as possible.
As a bonus: a few stories
As a bonus, I’ve got two stories for you.
Being in tasting condition
The first is about tasting conditions. Before tasting wine, you need to be in good condition. A sommelier treats their palate like a professional athlete. If you want to taste wine well, avoid eating very strong foods, avoid coffee and tobacco. And avoid brushing your teeth with toothpaste in the hours before the tasting. Sorry, but it’s for a good cause. That’s why some tastings take place early in the morning. In short, a nightmare.
The Judgment of Paris
The Judgment of Paris is also a great tasting story. On 24 May 1976, a panel of 11 judges made up of the most respected people in the wine world gathered at the InterContinental in Paris. They tasted 10 white wines and 10 red wines, each made up of 5 American wines and 5 French wines. In both cases, the American wines scored higher than the French wines.
This tasting sparked huge controversy in the wine world and, rest assured, plenty of criticism surrounds it. If you want to learn more about the Judgment of Paris, join the club.
And there you have it, well done, you now know how to taste wine. Once again, we’ve seen that wine isn’t a drink like any other: it’s not enough just to drink it to really understand it. Learning about wine is crucial to finally being able to fully enjoy it. So I’ll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, to keep up your wine-learning efforts, head over to The Club. You can sign up for free. It’s free, it’s interesting, and if you ever change your mind, you can unsubscribe whenever you like. So go ahead and sign up to our club.
Join the Club
Finally, it helps me a lot if you take a few minutes to leave this podcast a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts. So I’d encourage you to do it now that the episode is over.
For my part, I’ll see you in the next episode to learn even more and enjoy wine together.