You’ll need to use your eyes
I appreciate that one quarter of a glass of wine doesn’t constitute much in the way of fun, but having that small of an amount of wine in the glass will allow you to tilt the glass on its side and give it a good old swirl without spilling the contents — I hope.
Take your glass by the stem and, with some decent overhead light and something white underneath, tilt the glass away from you at a 45-degree angle. Looking at a glass of wine can only tell you so much about it: beyond the obvious red or white, what you’re seeing might give clues as to what variety the wine is, how it was produced, its age, and its condition.
What to look for
Remembering that color does not affect quality, most young wines should show bright, vibrant colors; reds will range from bright cherry to purple, while whites will go all the way from bright gold to green, to colors so pale they border on being clear. As wine gets older, red wines tend to turn slightly brown and get lighter, while white wines become darker.
Condition of the wine
Buying young wine requires a similar approach to buying fish — bright and shiny, rather than cloudy and dull. But tread with care. Some varieties are naturally lighter in color than others, and increasing numbers of wines today are being bottled unfiltered — both of which can trick you into thinking that a wine is older than it may be or, worse still, out of condition. Unfiltered wines will not be as bright or clear and tend to look darker; a white wine out of condition due to premature oxidation will darken, while a red will lighten.
Color jargon
- Red wine: look at the middle of the wine, then the outside rim — colors vary through inky black, purple, ruby, red, and garnet to mahogany and brown
- White wine: look for clarity and brightness — colors vary through almost clear, green, straw, and lemon to golden, amber, and tawny
- Rosé wine: look for depth of color and “pinkness” for good condition — colors vary through coral and salmon to pink
You’ll need your nose
There’s no sense more important than smell when it comes to tasting wine. At the top of your nose, just behind your eyes, is your olfactory nerve — the epicenter of smell and taste. Your olfactory nerve is the communications link between what you smell and taste, and your brain. You taste berries, it tells brain. Burn your toast and your brain will find out about it soon enough. That’s why it’s really important to take some time and smell what’s in your glass.
Take the glass by the stem and have a smell. Don’t swirl; just put your nose to the glass and smell. Now repeat the process, only give it a good old swirl first. To do this, find a flat surface such as a table, and take hold of the stem as though you were holding a pencil. Start the glass moving by making small clockwise rotations — almost as though you were tracing around a coin. Try to build up your speed as you go.
Aroma molecules are released from a wine’s surface, so by swirling the glass you’re increasing the surface area of the wine, which (fingers crossed) will give us more to smell. How far away you hold your glass from your nose is up to you; there are no hard-and-fast rules about this. So here we go — a bit of a swirl followed by a big sniff. Notice a difference?
The kinds of things that you should be looking for are fruit smells, non-fruit smells, and faults although hopefully the faults are few and far between. While fruit smells are pretty self-explanatory, non-fruit smells are not (see box, left) — some of which came through production and some of which are just characteristic of the grape variety.
Finally, if you can’t smell anything, don’t worry. It may be that the wine is too cold. If so, place your hands around the bowl of the glass for a couple of minutes. Or, it may just be the wine — unfortunately, some wines don’t smell of much at all. In any case, give the glass another swirl and have another smell. There’s no limit to how many times you should smell a wine. Some you’ll have to smell only once, others will change in the glass so you can go back again and again.
Aroma jargon
This should be a personal judgment — remember what it is you smell in a wine so that you can compare in the future. Fruit aromas speak for themselves, but the following are others to look out for:
Tobacco Leather Spices Nuts Herbs Earth Animals Farmyard Minerals Smoke Flowers Eucalyptus Grass Olive Kerosene Honey Chocolate Tar Vanilla Butter Toast
And, of course, you’ll need your mouth
Taste is the final sense we use when tasting wine. While what we taste largely qualifies what we’ve smelled, the one major advantage your mouth has over your nose is that it can feel texture as well as discern sugar, acidity, and tannin.
Texture, or how a wine feels in your mouth, is really important. Wine can feel silky and fine, lean and austere, oily and round, or rough and aggressive. Beyond smell and taste, how a wine feels in your mouth will heavily influence your reaction to the overall package.
You can divide your tongue into three parts: the front senses saltiness and sweetness, the sides and middle sense acidity, and the back senses alcohol and tannin. And, almost like an echo, great wine will often resonate, going on and on long after you have swallowed it.
Take a sip — about half a mouthful is perfect. Rather than simply swallowing it, give it a good swish around your mouth. Try to suck a bit of air in at the same time — without dribbling. It’s kind of like whistling in reverse. Swishing it around your mouth will give you a really good snapshot of what the wine tastes and feels like, with the air helping to release more flavor.
What to look for in wine
With the wine in your mouth, think about body: is it light like water or heavy like Guinness? Think about the following:
1. Flavor: Is it sweet, sour, bitter, salty, dry, or hot?
2. Texture: Is it minerally like water from a stream or oily like, well, olive oil?
3. Balance: By balance, I mean that wine is a sum of its parts, which collectively should be seamless — kind of like looking at a jigsaw puzzle from a distance and not being able to see the individual pieces, or a band where each of the members is both playing in tune and in time with the others.
4. Length: This refers to how long you can taste the wine after you’ve swallowed it.
Excerpted from “Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Matt Skinner. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from Mitchel Beazley.