The Mystery Of Wine Tasting: A Bouquet Of Fancy Aroma Prose

By Paul Ippolito

Don't you just love it when you read a wine review that says a wine has "hints of caramel, honey and a touch of oilness" or that its aroma is "fragrant, confectionery and rose petal nose".

Indeed, you quite rightly might be excused from thinking, the person writing this was describing perhaps a toffee apple, a flower or a new line of candy bar rather than the wine they were tasting.

The process of and language of wine tasting and writing evokes a variety of responses from people ranging from confusion, uncertainty to utter disbelief as to how and why a wine smells and tastes a certain way and even more so the words used to describe these.

I have to confess to being the author of the above linguistic gems in order to describe a Pinot Gris, and Rosé respectively. Hey, don't be too hard on me. Finding the words to describe a wine is quite hard work! Really, it is.

The reality is that tasting and describing wine is not as simple a task as it seems and indeed involves challenges to all of the human senses. What we see, smell and taste is hard to put into words without some basic education and a fair bit of practice. What I want to do in the next few paragraphs is to try and demystify wine tasting for you.

Then, hopefully and not before too long, you will be well on the way to better sniffing, tasting and pontificating on wine, complete with a host of new fancy wine words to impress your friends.

First though, some basics about wine tasting!

• The quality of a wine is best assessed by your eyes, nose and palate. No computer, robot or machine can do it as well as a human being (yet).
  
  
• Tasting therefore involves looking, smelling and sipping a wine. Notice that I distinguish between tasting and drinking a wine - the former which implies spitting and having a think about the wine unlike the latter that involves swallowing the stuff and contemplating the next glass!
  
  
• Find yourself a good wine merchant and patronise them. They are an invaluable source of directing you towards a wine to suit your taste. Most also conduct wine tastings regularly so that way you can try before you buy.
  
  
• Like everything in life, practice makes perfect, which in this case is a not really such a hard thing to do, given after all we are talking about wine, not some revolting tasting medicine.
  
  
• Don't get too worried about what anyone else thinks about the wine you are tasting - it's only your own opinion that counts. Wine tasting is not a contest about who can get the fanciest words out the quickest.
  
  
• Don't let the sexy labelling, those seductive medals on the bottle or the price of the wine affect or influence your preconceptions about how a wine should taste.
  
  
• When tasting wine, start in the order of sparkling, then white, red, dessert and finally fortifieds. At best, your palate will be able to properly assess a dozen wines, before it starts to fatigue.

Now to the nitty gritty of actual tasting. Remember again, it's all about sight, smell and taste.

Start by pouring a taste into your glass - about less than a quarter of a glass. Remember what I said
before, this is a tasting and not a drinking binge.

First we need to look at a wine's colour, so do so against a white background. What you are looking for is depth of colour and clarity of a wine. Colour for white wine can range from straw to yellow to gold and for red wine from purple, crimson to red.

Smell is probably the most significant sense when it comes to tasting wine. Take your glass in hand, swirl it (not too hard) then put your nose into it, right into it and then take a good long hard sniff or two. This is where you will really pick up on the characteristics of a wine.

This is also about the time the confusion and uncertainty kicks in. You will be saying to yourself what the heck can I smell - yes, I know its vinous but I can't really put my finger on what it smells like and as for finding the right words, well, you must be joking.

This moment will of course also coincide with some other wit near you harping on about lychees and cat pee wafting up their olfactory passage (nose!). You on the other hand, will probably be flat trying to remember the last time you actually took time out to smell a lychee, let alone recall what it smelt like!

Relax, don't get too frustrated if you can't immediately describe the smells coming from your glass - this is an acquired skill and it takes lots of time and practice.

Remember also that wine tasting is a subjective experience - it's very personal and relates to your opinion and no one else's. And by the way, you can't fail wine tasting, all you do is go back and practice more (again, not an arduous task).

Do, however, try and use some words familiar to yourself to describe the wine. This will develop your wine vocabulary. Have a go, that's all that counts.

Tasting wine works on the same principle. Take a mouthful, swirl it around and then have a think about what you can taste, and then spit it out (yes, you have to! - the sooner you get used to it the better). How to spit wine (without ruining every piece of clothing you are wearing) is another discussion for another day - and besides I'm still trying to master this trick myself! A tip for young players is to wear dark coloured clothes.

While the wine is swirling around in your mouth, ask yourself some questions about the wine you are tasting - is it dry or sweet? What's the fruit acid flavour like - soft, crisp, tart? What's the body of the wine like - light, medium or full? What are your overall feelings of how it tastes? How would it go with food and what type of food? Does it represent value for money?

Take some notes, don't trust your memory. It doesn't have to be anything fancy - just some basics like the name of the wine, its vintage and some comments regarding sight, smell and taste.

Finally remember to enjoy and savour the experience of trying a new wine and don't take it all too seriously as it will eventually all fall into place, when you too will be able to wax lyrically about that lovely barrel fermented chardonnay that is "well rounded and balanced, exhibiting strong but tight concentrated fruit characters which are well integrated with its French oak!" Have fun and enjoy wine tasting!

Paul can be contacted by email at Paul_Ippolito@hotmail.com where you can also request to be placed on his mailing list for his wine newsletter.

About Paul Ippolito.