It's always helpful and informative to taste more than one wine so that you can compare. How can we find out what we prefer if not through comparison? Tasting two or three wines side by side is a great way to learn.
SAMPLING WITH ALL YOUR SENSES
With a little discipline, you can enjoy tasting wine and learn quickly. If you don't employ a systematic approach, you'll lose the benefit of context and your growing personal experience and perception.
In wine evaluation, we make use of all the senses:
| Sight: | The appearance of a wine is often overlooked, but it's packed with information. |
| Smell: | Most evaluation is done through aroma analysis. |
| Taste: | It's overrated in the evaluation process but still essential. |
| Touch: | Wine possesses tactile qualities, such as body and texture, that are critical to enjoyment and understanding. |
Hearing, too, in the figurative sense—listening to what the wine has to say—is also an evaluative step!
SIGHT
The appearance of a wine provides information about the wine's quality and age. With experience you can sense, literally at a glance, how a wine was vinified (or made) and from what type of grape or grapes it was produced. Wines that have spent a long time aging in an oak barrel may look deeper and richer than those that have not. This contrast would be obvious in a side-by-side comparison of current releases of a barrel-fermented Chardonnay with one that was fermented in a stainless-steel vat. Wines of different grapes display different hues: a lightly pigmented, cherry-colored Pinot Noir contrasts dramatically with an inky black Zinfandel, for example.
Examine the wine against a neutral background. A sheet of white paper or a white shirtsleeve will do fine. Avoid tinted backgrounds that will distort the wine's appearance. Ample light is critical, and natural light is far better than incandescent. Tilt the glass away from you and look across the surface of the wine. Compare the color at the rim of the glass with the color in the center. The difference, referred to as rim variation, is more common in red wines than in whites. Generally, the more the layers of color change from the center of the glass to the edge, the older the wine is likely to be.
ROSÉ AND BLUSH WINES
A rose is a rose, except when it's a…rosé! While rosé wines come in varied types, the best examples are made from red grapes. When pressed, all grapes run with clear juice; it is during the process of alcoholic fermentation that color is bled (the French call this process saigner) from the skins. The color of wine made from red grapes progresses from clear to blush to rosé to red. If the skins are removed when the liquid reaches a rosé color, the resulting wine will share characteristics with both reds and whites: mild red-wine flavors with a chillable white wine personality. Rosés should be served at a slightly warmer temperature than whites, however; an ideal temperature is around 55 degrees.
Dry rosés can be refreshing alternatives to light- or medium-bodied white wines. The grapes most commonly employed in dry rosés include Grenache, Carignan, Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. Pinot Noir lends itself to a lovely rosé still wine (often called vin gris), which can be quite enjoyable for warm-weather drinking. Vin gris and other dry blushes and rosés are delicious with fish, fowl, white meats, grains and pasta, and summer produce.
However, not all blush or rosé wines are dry. Off-dry examples such as white Zinfandel, blush Merlot, and Rosé d'Anjou (made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in the Loire Valley's Anjou region) can easily take the place of a Riesling or Chenin Blanc. These wines, which should be served somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees, are excellent with ketchup-slathered burgers, aromatic curries, spicy Asian fare, and sweet barbecue sauce. Production methods for off-dry rosés vary; many are mass produced, and grapes are blended to achieve the desired color and sweetness profile.
The wine at the center of the glass should look bright rather than milky, hazy, or anemic. Although unfined and unfiltered wines are fashionable today and can be dull in appearance, most wines will reflect light and display brilliance; these are signs of quality production. Wines shouldn't exhibit effervescence; the exceptions are sparkling wines (obviously), young whites that may retain a bit of youthful spritz, and specific interpretations of whites and even reds that, by design, may impart a prickle to the tongue. Identify the color of the wine with descriptors that are meaningful to you. One person's straw yellow is another's light sunflower. Does the color make contextual sense? Remember that red wines fade and lose color as they age, whereas white wines darken and intensify in hue. If a producer's new release of Cabernet Sauvignon is a faded mahogany brown, there's likely a problem. But if a friend at home pulls out a well-stored ten-year-old Chardonnay that still appears youthful in color, this, of course, is good!
Take note of the depth of color of the wine. Generally, wines that are deeper and more saturated in hue will have more muscle and oomph, while those less intense in color will be lighter and more elegant. Although color is no guarantee of quality, it will give you a sense of what to expect from the wine: a full or light body, powerful or delicate flavors.
Finally, swirl the wine to examine the so-called tears, or legs. Swirl the glass and note how liquid rivulets form and run down the inside of the glass from the apex of the “swirl line.” The speed at which the tears form and run down the side of the glass can tell you something about the wine's personality and body, but, again, they are not an indication of quality. The rule of thumb is straightforward: the slower the formation and fall of the tears, the higher the alcoholic content or sugar in the wine. Thus richer, full-bodied wines tear more slowly than lighter wines; and, in general, warmer-climate wines (most reds, for example) will tear more slowly than cooler-climate wines (whites). The tears of sweet wines, with their higher sugar content, fall more slowly than most others. If you find in your initial swirl that the tears aren't forming, swirl several more times. As when you season a pan, you need to create a thin coating of wine on the glass for the tears to form.
WINE AGE AND COLOR
SMELL
Most information about a wine is discerned in the nose, not in the mouth. Most of what we think of as taste is actually what we smell. When your nasal passages are congested with colds or allergies and you can barely breathe through your nose, you can barely taste anything at all. Fillet of sole tastes the same as chicken. It's essential to spend time sniffing and reflecting on the wine's aroma. Professionals will tell you that about 75 percent of their evaluation time is spent analyzing the aromas of a wine.
As with looking at wine, smelling it is a learned skill. Several short, sharp sniffs are more efficient than one big inhalation. The nose is a very sensitive instrument, one that fatigues quickly and should not be overworked. By swirling the wine in the glass, you increase the surface area and the wine's exposure to air and thus deepen the aromatic impact. I always recommend picking up the glass, smelling the wine statically, and then swirling it and going back for a second sniff. Cupping your hand over the glass will further amplify the aroma.
First make certain that the wine smells clean—free of faults. Wine should smell like wine, not vinegar, rotten eggs, or roadkill. If in doubt, ask for an opinion from someone else. Second, the description on the label should match what you get in the nose and subsequently the glass. If the label says it's a rich, smooth, and chocolaty Cabernet Sauvignon and what you smell is a bitter, sharp, and austere wine, something's wrong. The initial scents of wine are largely fruit-driven. Yes, wine sometimes actually smells like grapes, as a grapey Grenache-based wine or Gamay Beaujolais will do. Most, however, smell fruity but not grapey per se. That's