The Popularity of Wine Tasting
Popular Wine Tasting
Wine tasting has been appreciated for centuries by wine connoisseurs but in recent years it has become popular with even the most casual wine drinkers everywhere. Experts and amateurs alike are nosing up to the goblet to try their hand at assessing the more intricate qualities of the luscious liquor.
Wine festivals that began popping up like dandelions across the United States over two decades ago have served to promote the attributes of wine in not only its flavor but in its ambiance, its decadency, its intricacy.
Events like that of the Twin Cities (Minnesota) Food and Wine Experience, Denver’s International Wine Festival, Seattle’s Taste Washington, Houston’s Grand Wine and Food Affair, and Nantucket’s Wine Festival are just a few of the huge number of festivals going on across the country every year. In just about any month of the year there is a wine tasting festival to be found somewhere.
Many of these festivals are quite spectacular events with lots of good food and entertainment with a local flair. But a key focus of these events is the opportunity for attendees to have exposure to a lot of different wines from wineries around the world and to hopefully find some that they like well enough to purchase.
Although it’s all tremendous fun, after sipping the minute bit of wine you are given as you fight your way through the throngs of the main floor party to get in line for one vendor and then the next, and so on, two things become clear: first, after enough wee sips of many different kinds of wine you will find all kinds of wine that you have to buy, and second, this is no way to learn how to do an authentic wine tasting.
If you want to get the most out of these events, I suggest learning the basics of wine tasting before you attend a festival, and then go to the events knowing that you will purchase a few bottles of the most interesting wines and bring them home to appreciate in the quiet and calm of your home, perhaps hosting your own wine tasting party. And, if you are not yet a wine expert, there are certain techniques that you can learn to fully appreciate and coax the best flavor from a wine, in which you’ve invested good money.
The 5 Steps of Wine Tasting
Wine tasting – whether done for fun at a wine tasting party, as a career like that of a sommelier or retail wine buyer, or simply because that’s the way to most enjoy a glass of wine – is much more than just giving a quick thought to the wine before swallowing it.
Wine tasting is the examination and evaluation of wine’s character by using the senses of sight, smell and taste.
Each individual sense helps us to reveal something different about a wine’s character by describing it and assessing it using standard wine descriptors; other important steps in the wine tasting process help us to then pull our evaluations together to rate a wine in its entirety. The whole wine tasting experience is comprised of five steps which include:
1. Appearance
2. Aroma or bouquet “in glass” (aka nose)
3. Flavor (aka “in-mouth” or “on-palate” sensations)
4. Finish (aka aftertaste)
5. Overall Quality (Final Score).
Performing each phase of wine tasting has many benefits, one of which is empowering us to choose good wines, and toss bad ones. As we learn to correctly analyze a wine, we begin to understand what we enjoy or don’t enjoy about it, and we learn to describe the sensations provided by the wine tasting.
Experienced wine tasters, professional wine tasters, and those who just enjoy good wine, can identify properties of a wine that tells of its:
- Complexity and character – layers of flavor add complexity to a wine. Complex wine is said to have depth and continues to reveal its nuances as you taste it. This multi-dimensional characteristic is most often achieved by aging.
- Potential – as in suitability for aging, drinking with food, etc.
- Possible “faults” – such as oxidation due to poor aging methods, cork taint, an overexposure to oxygen, and yeast contamination from acetobacter or Brettanomyces yeasts.
Standard Wine Tasting Terminology
Wine Tasting Terminology
Wine tasting practices date back to the 14th century and ancient wine production, and has evolved much since that time into the formal methodology used by professional wine-tasters today. This methodology includes ways to describe the range of flavors, aromas and overall characteristics of a wine. This same standard wine terminology can be used by less formal, personal wine tasting occasions, such as at your home wine tasting parties, as well.
The use of standard wine tasting descriptors gives the wine taster an opportunity to verbalize the flavors and aromas that they experience and can be used in evaluating a wine’s overall quality.
A wine taster’s own personal experience plays a considerable role in conceptualizing what they taste and in attaching a description to that perception. In that way, wine tasting can take on a subjective quality, meaning that descriptors may very well be perceived in different ways among various wine tasters. For example, in judging a wine’s taste, the descriptor “spicy” could mean different things to different people. To some it might mean anise or licorice. To others it might mean peppery or cinnamon. For this reason it does well for a wine taster to be more specific in their analysis of a wine, taking spicy, for example, to the next level of description.
Learning the great art of wine tasting offers wine lovers the chance to really appreciate a wine’s characteristics, complexities, tastes and aromas. Some perform the 5 steps of wine tasting every time they partake in a glass of wine, knowing that they will discover the best the wine has to offer; and if it’s a good well-balanced bottle of wine, how much greater the reward.
