Wine tasting involves a 5-step tasting process wherein a wine’s characteristics are evaluated using the senses of sight, smell, and taste.

The wine taster describes characteristics observed in the wine by using terms that have long been standardized as wine descriptors.

Wine Tasting Process

The best wine tasting assessments are done when the “tasting field” has been neutralized and comparisons can be reached by evaluating one wine against another, using certain parameters. For this reason, several approaches to wine tasting have been developed and utilized by wine tasting connoisseurs; some of the most popular approaches to wine tasting today are:

• Blind Wine Tasting
• Horizontal Wine Tasting
• Vertical Wine Tasting
• Flight Wine Tasting

A closer look at each one of these approaches to wine tasting helps us to better understand the value they play in the fine art of wine tasting.

Blind Wine Tasting at its Best and Worst

Blind Wine Tasting

To prevent an unbiased judgment of a wine, wine tasting is done in the blind – meaning that the tasters are not allowed to see the label or the shape of the bottle. Additionally, blind tasting will often involve the use of a black wine glass to mask even the color of the wine. Knowing such details as is found on a wine’s label like its name, reputation, grape variety, geographic origin, price, color, and so on, can easily prejudice the wine taster with a pre-determined “expectancy” before even having taken a sniff or sip of the wine.

The strong effects of expectancy and powers of suggestion on perception have long been established with scientific research. It is natural for wine tasters to expect a pricier bottle of wine to have more favorable characteristics than a less pricey bottle of wine. Given wine they are told is expensive, a wine taster will nearly always report that it tastes better than the same wine when told that it is an inexpensive wine.

A great example of this is when Frédéric Brochet, a French researcher, served the same mid-range priced Bordeaux in 2 separate bottles; one with labeling of a cut-rate table wine and the other with labeling of a grand cru wine. He received predictable assessments. Wine tasters described the alleged grand cru as complex, woody, and round and the alleged cheap wine as light, short, and faulty.

Likewise, expectations about wines occur because of their vintage, producer, color, aroma, and numerous other factors. Another great example of the influence of expectations is when Frédéric Brochet served tasters a white wine and received from them typical white wine descriptors: dry, fresh, lively, and honeyed. He later served the exact same wine which he had dyed red, and he received from the tasters the typical red wine descriptors: spicy, intense, supple, and deep.

Probably the most famous instance of blind wine tasting came out of a 1976 “Judgment of Paris” wine competition, where French judges blind tested wines from California and France. Without preliminary powers of suggestion or expectations, the judges found that California wines beat out the French wines, a result that would’ve been highly unlikely in a no-blind contest. This extraordinary event was depicted in the 2008 movie entitled, “Bottle Shock.”

The Differences between Horizontal and Vertical Wine Tasting

Horizontal and Vertical Wine Tasting

Tastings that are meant to identify differences between similar wines are known as horizontal and vertical wine tasting. In horizontal wine tastings, all the selected wines are from the same vintage (or year) and wine variety but are produced by different wineries within a region. Keeping wine variety or type and wine region the same helps emphasize differences in winery styles. In vertical tastings, a particular wine type from one particular winery but from different vintages, are tasted, thus testing differences in various vintages of a vineyard.

Flight Wine Tasting Strategies

The term “tasting flight” is used by tasters to describe a collection of wines, typically 3 to 8 glasses, but sometimes as many as 50, which are offered for the objective of sampling, comparing, evaluating, and scoring. A wine’s quality and characteristics are more objectively assessed when tasted with several other wines.

Flight Wine Tasting

Wine flights can combine the use of other tasting techniques, such as “blind” tasting and “horizontal” or “vertical” tasting. Wines may be deliberately selected for a particular vintage or for a particular winery to better compare vintages and vineyards, respectively. To promote an unprejudiced analysis, wine bottles may also be disguised and black glasses used in a blind tasting, thereby ruling out any biased awareness of either winery or vintage.

With this wine tasting framework in mind, we can begin our exploration of the actual tasting and analyzing wine. For each step in the wine tasting process – analyzing appearance, aroma, flavor, finish and overall quality – there are specific ways of performing them that will result in deeper appreciation and enjoyment of a particular wine.

In every step of the way, a wine taster will take tasting notes and make evaluations about their perceptions, and they do this by using a score card. The score card allows room for specific comments about all the aspects of wine, such as detailed aroma and taste descriptors as well as a wine taster’s perceptions of texture, body, acidity, alcohol content, tannins, fruit, residual sugar, and balance.

Keeping a systematic record of tasting notes is an important task for professional wine tasters, but can be fun for the casual wine taster as well. Some Internet wine communities, such as Bottlenotes, Cellartracker, Winelog, and Snooth, allow members to keep track of their tasting notes online. This is something you might want to use as a method to keep track of your own tasting notes. “Hard copy” wine tasting journals are also available for this purpose as well.

There are several tools available to help with the wine tasting process, no matter which style of wine tasting is done. Using standard wine terminology, a mouth-feel wheel, an aroma wheel, and a score card will make the process fun and easy. So check out these tools to enhance your wine tasting experience!