Wine Tasting 101

A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding and Enjoying a Wine

When you think of wine, what kinds of wine come to mind? Red? White? Rosé? Sparkling? Did you know that although there are basic types, there are even more styles by which wines are made? These different styles employ different techniques of production, different varieties of grapes, and different blends of these grapes. Therefore, not all red wines are alike in terms of appearance, smell, and taste. If you are new to wine and would like to take that next step towards enjoying that glass of wine in your hands, then this post/article is for you!

There are several things to keep in mind when tasting a wine, but let's reduce them to 3 main things that you can be take note of to get you start with. Very relevant, before opening a bottle of wine, it is best to prepare the environment and yourself as a taster.

Let’s begin with the environment. It is ideal to taste the wine in a quiet, well-lit, and smell-free environment. This allows your senses to zero in on the wine glass you are about to taste. Tasting wine is not just about the sense of taste. In order to fully appreciate the wine, it is recommended that you use your sight, touch, and smell as well.

To prep yourself, it is ideal to not have any lingering tastes in your mouth. Strong tastes such as those from tooth paste or mouth wash and garlic may tend to interfere with how the people taste the wine. We’ll be talking about this in our post about wine pairing. Try not to use perfume as this may interfere with the wine’s smelling notes, especially if these are delicate notes.

Once you are in the ideal setting and have prepped yourself accordingly, we may now begin. We will be following a method developed by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) to describe a wine in a standardized and analytical way. This method is called the Systematic Approach to Tasting (SAT).

Following the SAT, the first thing that we will be taking note of is the appearance of the wine. Did you know that just as tastes differ per wine, so does their appearance? Generally, wine appearances can be judged or looked at according to their color and the intensity of this color. Red wines can be colored anywhere from purple-ruby-garnet-tawny. A red wine with a hint of purple or blue is considered purple, while a red wine that is ruby in color is more red. Ruby is the most common color for most red wines. Meanwhile, a red wine with a hint of brown can be judged to have a garnet color, and a red wine that looks more brown than it is red is judged to be tawny in color. White wines, on the other hand, are judged according to a different color scale. These wines can either be lemon, gold, or amber. Most white wines have a lemon color. Rosé wines also have their own color scale. This starts with pink, which is the most common, onto pink-orange, and orange. Orange rosé wines are rare and may signify that it is of high quality.

Once you’ve taken note of the color, you can then check the color intensity. The color intensity is basically how far out the color of the wine extends from the core (the deepest part of the wine in your glass) to the rim (the shallowest part of the wine in your glass). For red wine, color intensity can also be judged based on how visible the stem of the glass is when looking straight down into the glass from above. Color intensity, according to WSET, may be judged to be anywhere in between light to medium to intense. A red wine with an intense color makes it impossible to see the stem of the glass when looking down through the liquid from above.

Following the appearance of the wine, we can now go to what wine enthusiasts like to call the “nose” or the smell of the wine. When judging the nose, take note first of the aroma intensity of the wine. When you smell it before swirling, are there aromas that come to mind immediately? If so, then you can say that it has an intense aroma. If you need to swirl the wine before you are able to note any aroma, you can say that the aroma is of medium intensity. If, on the other hand, even after swirling, the aromas are difficult to make out, the aroma intensity can be judged to be light.

All wines are made of grapes and no other flavors are added to them. The aromas are the results of the fermentation process, post-fermentation process, and maturation process of the wines. As these processes impart different flavors and smells to the wine, we can also group the smells and flavors according to the stage where these flavors are imparted to the wine. Primary aromas are the aromas that are imparted during the fermentation process. These can be: floral, green fruit, citrus fruit, stone fruit, tropical fruit, red fruit, black fruit, herbaceous,herbal, and spice among others. Secondary aromas are aromas that are imparted during post-fermentation of the wine. These can be aromas such as: biscuit, pastry, break, cheese, cream, vanilla, cloves, coconut, smoke, coffee. Lastly, tertiary aromas. These are aromas that come about as a result of maturation or when a wine is aged. Examples can be: dried fruit, leather, earth, mushroom, meat, tobacco for red wine; orange marmalade, petrol, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, honey, caramel for white wine.

Once you have made your notes on the smell of the wines, we now proceed to the part that you have been waiting for: the actual tasting of the wine. Wine enthusiasts call this the “palate”. This includes not only the flavors that a wine has, but also how a wine feels in your mouth—more about this later, but for now, let’s focus on the flavors. Just as we have learned that there are primary, secondary, and tertiary aromas, the same can be said about the flavors. These are grouped in the same way and are imparted during the same stages as mentioned earlier.

But the palate is much more than just flavors. To fully recognize wine with the palate, we must also look at a few other things besides the flavors. First, let's talk about intensity. How intense are the flavors? Can you taste them as soon as you take a sip? The same scoring system as with aroma intensity can be used for this. Next, we can look at the acidity of the sweetness of the wine. There is a whole scale that you can use to describe how sweet a wine is. These can be anywhere from dry (not sweet/no sugar at all) to off-dry, a slight amount of sugar, to medium, to sweet. For reference, dessert wines are typically sweet, while single varietal Cabernet Sauvignons are typically dry. The word “dry” here does not mean that it makes your mouth dry, but rather refers to the absence of sugar in the wine, which emphasizes the tannins in the wine. Tannins come primarily from the skins of the grapes and are what give red wines their color. A wine with high tannins will usually leave a bitter taste and will cause your mouth to dry. Next, we look at the acidity of the wine. The acid in a wine has a mouth-watering effect. When determining how acidic a wine is, you may leave the wine in your mouth and see how much it makes your mouth water. If a wine has high acidity, it will make your mouth water more.

Following acidity, we now look at the alcohol level. Generally, wines with high alcohol have an abv of more that 14%, while those with low alcohol have and abv of less that 8%. Wines with abv levels in between this ranges have medium alcohol.

Once done taking note of all these, we can now proceed to drawing conclusions and judging how good the quality of the wine is. This can be done by looking at the following: the balance, complexity, flavor and aroma intensity, and the length of finish. When we talk about the balance of a wine, we are looking at how balance the components are: is the acid overpowering other flavors? Is the alcohol level too high that it makes the wine unpleasant? This is usually the minimum requirement of even the most basic wines. The complexity is based on the flavors and aromas present in the wine. These make the wine more complex and add a sort of depth to the wine. A wine that is more complex will naturally have more distinguishable flavors and aromas than one that is not. Some wine makers prefer not to add more flavors to their wine as they would like the current ones to shine even more. The flavor and aroma intensity has been discussed earlier.

Lastly, the finish. When talking about the finish of a wine, we are talking about how long the pleasant sensations and flavors of a wine linger in your mouth after being swallowed or spat. Wines with long finishes make them more desirable.

Putting all these together, we can now create a proper evaluation of the wine. Wines that fulfill at least one requirement are considered to be of acceptable quality, those that fulfill at least two are considered to be of good quality, three qualities are judged to be very good quality, and wines that tick all the qualities discussed in the previous paragraph are considered to be of outstanding quality.

With that, we would like to urge you to try this yourself with the wines available (link our wines)in our online shop. We hope you enjoy your wine tasting journey!