"Sour Grapes" Wine Tasting 101

Many of my friends ask me about wine selections and how to pair wines and I'm always happy to assist. Here's a little article I found that will also help you with wine tasting so you won't stick out like a sour thumb at that next posh dinner, or meeting the boss for lunch or so on.

So how does one taste the wine? In four steps: look, smell, taste, spit/swallow. Step one is to look at it (once it's in the glass) and evaluate its color. In general, the younger red wines are more red than the older that tend to become more brownish. The intensity of color tells you how concentrated the wine is. White wines also change color with age, from quite pale yellow to deep yellow. Notice though that some grapes and some climates will affect the color of wine as well, so these general rules not always apply! One other thing that people do is to watch at the so-called tears: the translucent drops or thin layer of liquid that you can see descending on the walls of the glass after you stir the wine. These tears are considered by some people to be a sign of quality, although this is just a myth - they are solely an indicator of how much alcohol there is in the wine. Nice to look at nevertheless!

Step two in wine tasting is very important and is the one that separates wine from soda and other common drinks. Smelling! As you may know we have a few thousand of smell receptors in our nasal cavity, in contrast to just five basic tastes that our tongues percept. Wine contains a lot of volatile flavor molecules that are so important to feel to really enjoy wine. So, stir the glass to release the flavors into the air and put your nose into the glass - and smell. Do it one more time. Good wines have a complex pattern of flavors, although some wines don't smell that much and still can be good. Try to describe all the smells you can identify. Many of them should be familiar to you, and with time you should be able to identify which grapes have been used in certain wines just be smell alone. The easiest ones to discern are e.g. Chardonnay from Sauvignon Blanc. Then also, the different wine producers, climates, years of harvest, terroir, etc. will also have their effect on the smell of wine.

Step three is to drink a bit of wine without swallowing it, and also to get a breathe of air into your mouth so it further releases the volatile flavors in the wine. This is how the wine should be appreciated, both on the tongue and in the nose. Now you may feel additional flavor molecules in your mouth, some that you haven't smelled before. Try to describe the taste.

Step four is either swallowing or spitting out the wine gracefully into a barrel and then - not finished yet - feel how long time a wine leaves its impression on your tongue. The longer time the better quality. Usually above six seconds is a very good sign, while below three is quite bad. Why the choice between swallowing and spitting? It all depends on how much wine you want and can drink. Usually, a professional wine tasting involving many wines does not allow for much swallowing, since one may quickly get drunk!

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