A competent wine tasting is not an easy thing, but if we master basic techniques, then almost every wine will taste much better. Nearly all professional wine tastings aim at exposure of all the imperfections of the liqueur. It does not mean, however, that we should expect much disappointment. Only very poor or evidently badly made wine will taste worse during the correct process of tasting.
There are people who claim that the art of tasting, as well as the whole ceremony connected with it, is only a useless complication. Wine needs to taste good and it is no use factorizing its construction. Well, there are several reasons for the tasting and the most important one is deriving even more pleasure from tasting this “drink of gods”.
PreparationWe need a few very important elements. The first one is, naturally, the bottle of wine. It is essential the wine is served in appropriate temperature. The fact that we serve white wine cool, or even cold, is known to almost everybody. In case of heavy and dense wine, its temperature should oscillate around 10 oC and the event of light, fresh one it should be between 6 oC and 8 oC. It is much more difficult to define the temperature of red wine. It is commonly said that it should be served in a room temperature. I feel sorry for those who have from 18 oC to 20 oC in their rooms, because this is the temperature in which red wine should be served. The question is how to reach it. We should put the bottle into the fridge for a quarter or two. This should be fully sufficient. Therefore we have the bottle in the appropriate temperature. The next step is to uncork it. There are many models of corkscrews, each of them has its pros and cons. From my own experience I recommend the “waiters-like” corkscrew with a two-stage wing. It lets uncork the bottle without any problems and without risk that the cork will break or crush. It is vital not to cut through the cork with the spiral of the corkscrew. This way we will avoid getting undesirable elements into the bottle. The uncorked wine is almost ready to be poured into the wine glasses but we can still treat it with the decantation process. Decantation is a slow pouring of wine into the proper decanter in order to oxygenize it and eliminate possible sediment from it. The sediment, except for its little elasticity, does not disturb in anything and in no way is the evidence of the wine’s defectiveness. Red wine is decanted more often but there are white wines which are worth treating like this too.
Wine glasses
Good glass is a very important, if not the most, element of tasting. The glass should be thin, transparent and not porous. The bowl of the wine glass should be the more closed, the more aromatic the wine is. Thanks to it, it is easier to recognize all scents, even those hidden in deep background. The wine glass should be clean, polished, so that it is easy to identify all the colours of the wine. Every wine glass emphasizes different features of wine, which should be remembered while tasting it with several other people. The use of different kinds of glass may make impossible the objective evaluation by all people. The wine should not fill the glass more than 1/3 of its height.
Wine evaluationThe first evaluated thing should be the colour of the wine. It is best to do it on a white background. The colour tells us much about the intensity and the age of the wine. The lack of clarity or long-lasting foam on the wine surface will make the wine very probable to be tasteless. Another element which is subject to evaluation is its bouquet. We mix the wine in the glass to free normally hidden bouquet nuances and afterwards we dip our nose deeply in the glass to assess smell values of the wine. We repeat this action for a few times, until we identify most scents. The more scents are in the wine and the richer they are, the bigger chance we are dealing with a good wine we have. The last thing which should be taken into consideration is the taste. We fill our mouth with a big amount of wine, so that it pours out on all taste buds. We evaluate the wine’s structure and the acidity, sweetness, bitter taste level, as well as the quality of tannins. We confront the taste with the bouquet and determine the balance between those two elements. The last issue to discuss is the “Finish”. The Finish is the taste in the mouth which remains after swallowing the wine. The longer, more complex and interesting it seems, the better our wine is. If any doubts appear, whether we are dealing with great or only with good wine, it is the quality of the Finish which should dispel all our doubts.
Wine can be evaluated in many ways. Point scales (twenty- or a hundred-point) are very popular. Equally often we deal with the description of the wine, together with the verbal evaluation of its quality. I recommend using the verbal description with any of the point scales.
Additional remarks
During professional tastings we can spit and slurp. The first action lets evaluate most wines objectively, the other facilitates the identification of the bouquet. In other circumstances both actions would be found tactless but in case of tastings they are by all means accepted. To well identify wine we need only three sips of the liqueur, unless we deal with a faulty one; then only one portion is sufficient. The tasting should be slow so that we give the wine some time. In the wine glass some unexpected changes caused by a quick oxygenation may occur. After a few minutes wine can change from being open to a wonderful, extensive liqueur. The correct process of tasting is a complicated and complex action but in most cases leads to the increase of our satisfaction and contentment.