Ground rules (cont)
- Taste silently and note your impressions so as not to influence other peoples reactions. You can swap notes and share them later with your colleagues. Trust your initial reactions, they are usually the most accurate.
- Everyone has their own perceptions and there is usually a good reason if you determine an aroma or a taste that no one else noticed. Trust your own instincts and understand that the more you taste, the more precise your responses will become.
- Start with a white, then two reds for your first tasting to avoid becoming saturated. As you get more experience, you can increase the number of wines you taste in one tasting session
Four steps to tasting wine
Here are the basic components of a wine tasting:
- The Look
- The Nose of the wine (also called bouquet)
- The Taste
- The Evaluation
The Look
Hold the glass of wine up, tilt it slightly in the glass without swirling the wine around. Determine a name for the colour you see. The colour of the wine will help you assess its age, where it derives from, and its concentration.
Young red wines are the colour of the grapes themselves, violet or ruby red. As wines get older, they become a purer red, and then orange tinted or even brownish in colouration.
White wines are normally a light straw or golden colour, becoming deeper yellow as the wine ages. Old wines will turn amber when they're really old.
The look (cont)
Typical colours of wines are :
- Red : ruby red, violet, garnet red, brick red.
- White : pale straw yellow, straw yellow, pale golden yellow, green-tinted pale golden yellow, golden yellow, deep yellow, amber-tinged yellow, amber (these last two are usually for older white wines, sweet white wines in particular take on these colours as they age)
- Rosé: grey (the lightest possible pink or orange tinted), onion peel (light orangey), salmon (pink with an orange tint), orange with a pink tint, deep raspberry pink, light red, light pink