Category: Wines

Knowing how to taste wine as good as a professional wine taster can be easy. Good Morning Divas will give you helpful tips to guide and teach you how to taste wine, how to evaluate wine and how to remove all hints of oenophobia (fear of wines)!

Wine has been tasted for thousands of years and people have been earning money as wine tasters for more than 100 years. What do wine tasters know that you don’t? After reading this page when it comes to tasting wine and understanding how to evaluate a wine for its qualities you’ll know much more.

Of course, they will have a greater understanding of wine and its history. The grape, the appellation the wine came from, as well as the chemistry behind things, but knowing those types of interesting information is not going to make you a better taster. Reading this page, and tasting wine repeatedly are going to turn you into a better taster.

The Difference in Wine Skill Sets
First, let’s get rid of any fear you might have about wine tasting. Wine is simply a true beverage of pleasure, which is certainly nothing to be afraid of. Remember, wine tasting, wine drinking, and evaluating wine are all related, but they are different skill sets.
• Tasting wine is more for education to help you understand the wine and let you know if you like the wine, or not.
• Evaluating wine is for a deeper, more critical look at the wine, or wines in question. Evaluating wine is often done in peer groups letting you know how a wine, or group of wine compares to other wines in the same peer group.
• Drinking wine is for pleasure. I hope that you will be spending a lot more time drinking wine than evaluating or tasting wine. The best wines in the world are meant to be enjoyed with friends and family over a meal.

The problem most people have with wine is “oenophobia,” a fear of wine. The fear comes from the a variety of factors starting with unfamiliarity with wine and how to talk about wine and explain what you’re tasting. This dictionary of wine terms will help you with that:

Understand that there is no right or wrong in your taste. You are always going to like what you like because you like it. Do not pay attention to workers at the wine store with the fancy vocabulary. People who work in wine stores tastes a lot more wine than you do, but won’t be able to decide what wine is best for your palate, only you can do that.

Don’t Overcomplicate the Wine
Sadly, too many people make wine overly complicated. Wine as a unique beverage is complex. Understanding wine is easy. Comparing wines to each other is even easier still. Take a look at how wines are rated and scored when compared to other wines in the same peer group:

How you can rate a wine
The simple way to look at this is, take two or three different glasses of a similar wine and compare them. You are going to like one better than the other and one glass is going to be the worse. You do not need a wine vocabulary to say you like this wine better or worse.
With time, your wine vocabulary will improve. For now, let’s stick with the basics of how to taste wine. To be a good wine tasters, all you need are your normal senses, sight, smell, taste and touch. With a little practice, you will see how easy it is to be a good wine taster.

No One Needs to Tell You What to Drink

The worst part of being told what’s proper, what’s required, what your parents did, what your parents would never do, what may offend two- thirds of your guests and what you’re expected to drink.

There’s an undeniable romance and tradition to toasting a couple with a Champagne flute, but you’re in charge and if standard sparkling wine’s not your bag, your wedding won’t be worse for it. If you’d like something a little sweeter, look into Moscato d’Asti; if you want something wild, taste your way through inky, sparkling Shiraz. It’s as good a way as any to wish someone well.

 

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Look at a glass of wine; it starts with your eyes. Just like food, your initial taste a wine starts with your eyes. The color of a wine can tell you a lot about the wine. One helpful hint is, when looking at a wine, hold out the glass and tilt it a bit. Try to hold the wine over a white surface like a white table cloth, plain white plate, napkin or other blank surface. At this point, you need to notice the depth of color from the rim to the center of the glass.

To fully understand the ramifications of the color, in this case, it helps to have a minor understanding of how a wine should look for its grape varietal, age and growing season. For now, we are going to focus on Bordeaux wine, which is most often a blend dominated by either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. For a young Bordeaux wine, the wine should be dark, displaying a depth of color from the rim to the center of the glass.

The color can feature purple or dark blue, often shiny accents. Deeper and richer colors let the taster know this is a concentrated wine. For my palate, concentration and depth of flavor is a good thing. Young wines that lack good color are going to be lighter less ripe and more acidic in style. That is natural for wines made from Pinot Noir. But for young wines produced using Bordeaux varieties, you want to see a good, rich, deep color.

The depth of color is also a good, beginning indicator of a wines style. An inky, dark hued Bordeaux is probably going to be intense, mouth filling lower in acid and long. Young Bordeaux or young Bordeaux styled wines with light colors are going to be lighter in flavor, with more red fruits than black and brighter in acidity.

Next in your visual evaluation of the wine is the legs or tears on the side of the glass. This is not all that important. You can skip ahead to the next paragraph if you like. But as you have probably heard many people remark on the tears or legs in a wine, if you did not skip ahead, let’s cover it now.

The size of the tears (drops) or legs (drips) of the wine.
The size of the tears or legs and the length of time they remain in the glass give a glimpse into the wines potential alcohol level and sweetness, as well as the viscosity (gooeyness) of the wine. Thin legs that dissipate quickly are found in lighter, less concentrated wines. While fatter, or more athletic legs that remain on the glass speak of a rich, concentrated wine with lots of fruit, sweetness and length.

Again, it’s important to note, the legs and tears of wine are related to the grape variety and the country the wine was made in. For Bordeaux styled wines, we want large tears that stay in the glass. Legs and tears will let you know a little about the alcoholic content and level of sweetness in the wine, they are not an indicator that you will like the wine, or not.

by Ella Patterson

 

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The Davis Wine Aroma Wheel is the perfect way for wine lovers to get a look at the numerous fragrances and flavors found in most wines. Each of these unique fragrances found in wine, are due to the grapes being used in the production of the wine, coupled with the soils and terroir or soil the grapes were planted in and the choices made by the wine maker. The graphs and information found on the wine aroma wheel will help you identify what you are tasting and smelling. For tips on becoming a better wine taster.

How To Taste Wine
The Davis Wine Aroma Wheel is divided into several sections to help you visualize the different flavors, scents and aromatic qualities found in most red and white wines, regardless of the grape variety. The same aromatic complexities and sensations pictured on the wine aroma wheel are found in red and white wines all over the world, from Bordeaux, to California and the Rhone Valley, as well as every other viticultural area.
In young wines, initially tasters will experience what is known as primary aromas. These early scents come predominantly from the fruits, which include notes of berries, grape, cherry, strawberry, boysenberry, cassis, blueberry, blackberry and black cherry in red wines. In white wines, the early aromatic qualities most often expressed range from citrus top apple, pear, pineapple or other tropical fruits. Young wines often offer coffee, vanilla or chocolate notes from the oak, as well as floral, stone, licorice and jammy scents.
However, not all scents in wine are positive. There are faults as well. The biggest fault in a wine takes place due to TCA, which causes a wine to smell like a wet dog, or old, wet newspapers.

For Help with How to Recognize a Corked Wine and its Causes
With time and bottle age, wines develop secondary or tertiary qualities which add layers of depth and complexity a wines bouquet. Some of the more easily recognizable tertiary aromas include tobacco, truffle, earth, spice box, chocolate, smoke, crushed stone and cigar box. These secondary qualities are prized as only the worlds’ best wines are capable of aging and developing these additional layers of complexity.
To get an idea for how some of these words and terms found in the wine aroma wheel are used to describe wine, you can search through thousands of Wine Tasting Notes.

To help you come up with the words and terms you feel comfortable with to allow you to discuss the wines that interest you, this is a very helpful link: ABC of Wine, A Glossary of Important Wine Terms

Read more at: https://www.thewinecellarinsider.com/wine-topics/wine-educational-questions/davis-aroma-wheel/