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Spend a few minutes listening to a sommelier speak about wine, and you’ll soon be enchanted by their talk of aromas and bouquets, lesser-known wine valleys, and silky tannins. It may seem daunting due to their extensive knowledge if you want to recreate a sommelier wine-tasting experience at home. However, developing your wine-tasting skills is quite accessible, allowing you to sip and swill alongside the best to identify wine characteristics.
As a wine enthusiast, you’re already halfway there. You know what you like and appreciate this exceptional drink. By following a few essential wine-tasting tips, you can start refining your palate and sound like a pro. One of the beautiful aspects of the wine world is that practice truly enhances your tasting abilities at home.
Polish Your Wine Tasting Skills
Wine tasting is a psychological exercise; mastering your senses and concentrating on subtle nuances in aroma and taste is critical. This requires a significant investment of time and a sizable budget, but taking a wine-tasting class can equip you with essential skills. And let’s not forget, it’s wine—who’s complaining?
Experts use a straightforward method involving three basic steps to identify wine characteristics: see, smell, taste, and draw a conclusion.
Step #1: See
When you pour a glass of wine, the first impression is visual. You can discern much from the wine’s color, opacity, and viscosity. Start by tilting your glass and looking at it against a white background to observe how the color changes towards the rim. This makes it easier to spot various elements.
Clarity and brightness are essential for white wines. Analyze whether the wine is golden or pale lemony green, which can indicate the grape type. Remember, white wines generally deepen in color with age. Red wines also offer variety, from lighter wines like Pinot Noir to rich reds like Shiraz. A violet hue suggests a younger wine, while a rustier, orangey color indicates an older wine. For rosé, lighter pinks reflect more delicate flavors, while smaller bubbles signify higher quality in sparkling wines.
Checking the “tears” of the wine—how the droplets roll down the glass—can reveal alcohol content (higher density of droplets) and sugar levels (slower-moving droplets).
Step #2: Smell
The aroma reveals much about the grapes and winemaking processes. Swirl the wine to release the aromas, then place your nose in the glass and take a few short sniffs. Understanding the difference between aroma and bouquet is crucial. Primary aromas (fruit, herb, and floral notes) come from the grape. For beginners, start with broad categories like tropical fruits in white or red fruits in red wines. More advanced tasters identify specific varietal fingerprints, such as the herbaceous aroma of Sauvignon Blanc or the cedar note in Cabernet Sauvignon.
Secondary aromas from fermentation and winemaking include smells like fresh bread from yeast or buttery notes from malolactic fermentation. Tertiary aromas, developed during aging, are often described as bouquets and include notes like blanched almond and dried tobacco.
Step #3: Taste
Tasting reveals a new set of characteristics. Consider the intensity of tannins and acidity, residual sugar, the wine’s mouthfeel, and the finish length. Our taste buds detect salty, sour, sweet, and bitter flavors. As you sip, draw the wine into your mouth to aerate it, release flavors, and breathe out through your nose.
Focus on acidity, tannins, and body. Acidity and tannins are more noticeable in reds, and viscosity reveals whether the wine is light or heavy in the mouth—light-bodied wines like Riesling contrast with medium-bodied Chardonnay and full-bodied Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Develop Your Palate
As a wine enthusiast, developing your palate and honing your tasting skills is rewarding. Each new wine offers an opportunity to practice identifying and separating aromas and flavors. Make notes on the wines you try to build a memory bank of references.
Train your senses by regularly smelling fruits, herbs, and spices. This practice enhances your ability to identify aromas quickly and contributes to greater enjoyment of wine and food.
Read Some Wine Reviews
Another skill is learning to describe different aromas and flavors. Practice putting into words the sensations each wine gives. Reading wine-tasting notes helps you understand the language experts use. Consider meeting with friends to taste wines, make notes, and describe characteristics.
Writing Your Own Wine Review
Writing down your findings is essential. Good notes help build a memory bank for your palate. Use a wine-tasting notebook or a note-taking app to jot down detailed notes and scores.
Institutions like the National Wine School provide students with a comprehensive SAT to describe wine universally. This helps manage the subjective nature of wine tasting and ensures consistent descriptions.
Take an Online Sommelier Class
Finally, learn from the experts. The National Wine School (NWS) offers world-class sommelier qualifications. Start with the L1 Online Wine Course and progress to more advanced levels, possibly even becoming one of the elite Masters in Wine. It all begins with interest and practice. So uncork, sip, swirl, and sniff. You’ll soon find yourself developing a palate to rival any sommelier.
How to Host a Wine-Tasting Party at Home
Setting up and Preparation
Setting the proper atmosphere at home for wine tasting begins with appropriate glassware. We have a guide on wine glassware here. Proper lighting is important as well—the room should be bright enough to view the wine’s hue. Finally, a comfortable temperature in the room is important as well. Seventy degrees with a humidity level of 70% is the gold standard.
Wine Selection
Choosing the right wines is the critical step, and we recommend taking a wine class or two before hosting your event. As a rule, you should always be 50% more knowledgeable about wine than your guests. And never trust a clerk at a wine shop to do the work for you: It’s always painfully obvious.
We recommend having a theme for the event. You could choose a single varietal from different regions or different varietals from the same region. If you opt for the latter, a good mix might include a light white, a rosé, a medium-bodied red, and a dessert wine.
Serving Order
The order in which you serve wines matters. Start with the light whites, progress to rosés, then reds, and end with dessert wines. Doing this will help keep your palate sharp throughout and not overwhelm your senses at the beginning. The last red—before the dessert wine—should be the biggest baddest red wine of the night.
Palate Cleansers
Palate cleansers like plain bread or water crackers are okay, but we prefer just water. The idea is to fully break down the acids and tannins on your palate to immerse yourself in the following wine. Crackers don’t do nearly as good a job as a sip of water.
Tasting Note Templates
Good notes enhance your wine-tasting journey. Use a basic template to specify appearance, aroma, taste, and overall impression. This way, you’ll remember the wines you tasted. Here is a wine-tasting note template you can use.
Wine Tasting Activities
A few activities can keep the tasting from turning into a booze fest. Challenge your guests to blind tastings, or compare your tasting notes with the pros to see how you compare. Sometimes, these activities can add a dynamic, educational element to wine tasting.
Storing Leftover Wine
If you are going to store leftover wine, do it right. Seal opened bottles well with a vacuum pump or inert gas spray. Store in a cool, dark place. White wines need refrigeration; reds can be stored up to 5-10 degrees F below room temperature.