Wine tasting is an art that everyone can develop. If you never quite know the kind of wine you should choose, it’s time to start building yourself a consumer conscience. You don’t need to attend wine tasting events to do this. Instead, if you do it over time, at home or on a dinner with friends, it will be more comfortable, especially if you’re a beginner. Nonetheless, wine tasting meetings shouldn’t scare beginners into learning how to really take in all the pleasure wine can offer. This is especially true if you go to a wine tasting workshop, designed to teach rookies the basic concepts.
Dealing with health issues
When talking about wine tasting, it’s always good to suggest moderate consumption. In a recent article on FT, opinionmaker Simon Kuper shared his vision about this topic. He found that he was drinking too much weekly and decided to stop. Wine tasting and consumption shouldn’t be like that; in fact, it’s more about the quality of the experience than the quantity, or the overall amount of ingested alcohol.
Three tips for wine tasting
Check out these three crucial tricks to improve your wine tasting.
Tasting
Amazingly, tasting involves three senses: sight, smell and taste itself. Some “connoisseurs” are fond of including touch to this list, as they consider that the tongue does identify not only flavours but also the complex and dense textures that wine can offer. But let’s keep it simple. You should look at the wine, discovering its structure. You should smell it, trying to find the fruits, oaks or other odours it might contain; and then you can drink and taste. People could swallow or spit, depending on whether they’re thinking of tasting a single wine or many, or if they liked it or not.
Notes
If you’re able to taste ten wines and the memories about each one of them endure, good for you! But the best way is to take notes for each wine you taste. What were the strongest flavours you felt on the wine? What about the subtle notes, the acidity, and your general opinion about it? Take notes and keep them in the long run. In the future, try to taste the same wine again and compare your sensations with your previous notes about it. Then you’ll understand you’re starting to develop a wine memory and your own taste.
Questions
It’s tough to make progress in wine tasting without asking questions. Find out where your wine comes from: is it French, Portuguese or even Georgian wine? What are the main characteristics of a given grape variety, a winemaking region, or a combination of both? Wine enthusiasts love to talk about it, and they will be of great help.