Hey y'all!
We wanted to throw together a little info sheet to help explain some of the terms and ideas we use and look at when we're tasting a wine. We also thought it would be cool to show you the tasting and evaluating process so you can go through it yourself if you want-- No pressure though, we're doing this so you can drink good wine without having to do the legwork!
Key Definitions
Acidity: The sensation of acid the wine creates, judged by how much the wine makes you salivate.Body: Describes the weight or fullness of the wine in your mouth.
Nose/Bouquet: All of the aromas coming off of the wine.
Finish/Draw: The lingering taste or sensations left by the wine in your mouth after you swallow.
Measures of Sweetness (Dry, off-dry, sweet): How much sugar is left after fermentation (% Residual Sugar or RS). Technically speaking a wine is considered dry if it has less than .02% RS, but for our purposes a wine is dry if it has no detectable sweetness, off-dry if it has just a little bit, and sweet if the sweetness is really prevalent.
Rim Variation: How the concentration of color changes from the center to the edges of the glass (hold the wine sideways to view), and how large of a margin of clear liquid there is.
Tannins: Compounds found in wines and bitter foods (kale, some types of carrots) that create sensations of bitterness in your mouth and dry it out by precipitating proteins in saliva. A wine with a prominent tannin structure is described as being tannic.
Tasting
When we're tasting a wine for evaluation, we (loosely) follow this chart, starting with sight, then progressing onto nose, palate and taste. (Link to a larger version)
Basically, we start out by looking at the color of the wine- how bright it is, how clear it is, the hue (which color it most closely resembles), and the concentration of color. To look at the concentration you tip the glass to the side, generally against a white background, until it's thinned across the glass. From this view you can see how the concentration of color changes as the wine thins out and roughly estimate how intense the flavors of the wine will be when you taste it.
After looking at the color we start to smell the wine, first looking for any overpowering bad smells, then trying to pick out different aromas, many times fruity aromas. This is one of the most intimidating things about starting to evaluate wines. In fact, we really aren't all that great at it ourselves, so we aren't looking for minutia, just the big few aromas that are really going to influence a person's enjoyment of the wine. After all, most of what we taste comes from what we're smelling!
We use this flavor wheel to help us figure out what we're smelling and tasting. It's a great thing to have on hand if you're trying to figure out what the heck that taste/smell is but you can't quite put your finger on it.
After we've made made some judgments on how the wine smells we get to the exciting part: drinking! Make no mistake, there is no sipping and/or spitting here.
With the first swig, we try to feel out the texture of the wine: primarily bitterness, astringency, acid, and alcohol. once we have a good grasp of that we start digging into the flavors of the wine using the same wheel that we used for aromas (seriously, it's a great thing to have on hand). We loosely go through fruit first then move onto any non-fruit flavors that may be present, focusing on the prominent flavors that jump out at us. On the tasting grid shown above, it also has sections for conclusions, but those are for blind tasting, so we ignore that.
After we've gone through that, we compare notes with each other and decide what we want to rate the wine on a 10 point scale.
10 Point Scale
1- Why did they even put it in a bottle?
2- Run away
3- Sub-2 Buck Chuck
4- Bottle useful mainly as a weapon in case of emergency
5- Maybe give it to your ex for their birthday.. if you're feeling mean
6- Open this one after you're almost done with the first bottle
7- Average. If it was given to me as a gift, I wouldn't complain
8- Good value. Buy it in a pinch.
9- Take it to a pot-luck with your friends and impress them
10- Hunt it down. It's serious y'all
Following our full evaluation, we properly dispose of the rest of the bottle.
I hope this was helpful! In the future we might delve a little more into what's happening behind the scenes to get the wine to your table so you can get a feel for everything that goes into it. If there's anything that we didn't explain or anything you'd like to hear more about from us please drop a line in the comment section! And if this seems intimidating to you don't worry about it! Just drink wine! Strive to drink new wines every time you do pop a cork. If you're into it you'll start to notice some of these things without even thinking. And that, my friends, is when you know you're hooked.
Cheers,
A&P
No comments:
Post a Comment