How to Develop Your Wine Testing Experience

1. Look

If you are going to winecountry vacation then check out the color, opacity, and viscosity (wine legs). You don’t really need to spend more than 5 seconds on this step. A lot of clues about a wine are buried in its appearance, but unless you’re tasting blind, most of the answers that those clues provide will be found on the bottle (i.e. the vintage, ABV and grape variety).

2. Smell

When you first start smelling wine, think big to small. Are there fruits? Think of broad categories first, i.e. citrus, orchard, or tropical fruits in whites or, when tasting reds, red fruits, blue fruits, or black fruits. Mainly getting too specific or looking for one particular note can lead to frustration. So, broadly, you can divide the nose of a wine into three primary categories:

·         Primary Aromas are grape-derivative and include fruits, herbs, and floral notes.

·         Secondary Aromas come from winemaking practices. The most common aromas are yeast-derivative and are most easy to spot in white wines: cheese rind, nut husk , or stale beer.

3. Taste

Mainly taste is how we use our tongues to observe the wine, but also, once you swallow the wine, the aromas may change because you’re receiving them retro-nasally.

Taste: Our tongues can detect salty, sour, sweet, or bitter. All wines are mainly going to have some sour, because grapes all inherently have some acid. This varies with climate and grape type.

Texture: Your tongue can also “touch” the wine and perceive its texture. Mainly texture in wine is related to a few factors, but an increase in texture is almost always happens in a higher-alcohol, riper wine.

4. Think

So, did the wine taste balanced or out of balance (i.e. too acidic, too alcoholic, too tannic)? Did you like the wine? Was this wine unique or unmemorable?

So, keep above things in mind before going to California wine tours.