Oct 20 2009
Wine Tasting as an Art
People who like to taste wines typically refer to it as tasting. The art of wine tasting is the evaluation of wines using the senses of sight, smell, and taste. It is a very popular pastime involving the use of specific terms, and there are wine tasters who are considered professionals. The professionals believe that wine tasting gives people a heightened sense of enjoyment when they can appreciate the efforts of the winemakers and the wines they produce. Wine tasting involves four essential taste responses. These are based on receptors located on the tongue that respond to sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and sweetness. Wine can have one or more of these tastes, professional tasters agree. The sense of taste is linked to the sense of smell, so both senses are critical to tasting.
How to Taste Wine
Wine tasting is a simple art, and wine tasting events can be held at home or at parties. When evaluating wines, the most important features to consider when a taster is going through the process are the color, clarity, smell, and taste. For color and clarity, hold the glass of wine in front of a white backdrop and visually appraise it. Look from the edge to the middle during your appraisal. When tasting reds, look for maroon, brick, purple, or hints of brown. If the wine is white, then amber, green, yellow, gold, or brown are the colors to be looking for. Also, professional tasters will look for the presence of sediments by swirling, tilting, and inspecting the glass for particulates.
Smell is a critical factor during wine tasting. To correctly smell the bouquet of a wine, swirl the glass gently to dissipate some of the alcohol aroma. Giving the wine a quick whiff, so that the initial scent is what you smell, is important. Following the initial appraisal, a deep breath is taken with the nose inside the glass, so that scents, such as, vanilla, citrus, flowers, or berries can be identified. The actual wine tasting consists of sipping the wine to evaluate the flavor. The first stage, the attack phase, is taking a sip and letting the wine roll all over the tongue. The wine taster registers his or her initial reaction to the flavor of the wine.
The evolution phase is the second stage, and this is when the various flavors are scrutinized and dissected until the identity of the product is narrowed down. The last stage of wine tasting is the “finish”, and this is based on the length of time that the flavor of the wine remains in the mouth after it is swallowed. Through wine tasting, people can determine if they would like to drink more of a particular wine or if the flavor was too bitter or strong for their taste.
