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| The Course |
| How to taste wine |
Visual assessment
The first of the three stages of wine tasting is a visual assessment of the wine.
This is so important that it enables the taster to decide whether to go ahead
with the tasting or not (if the wine is turbid, with suspended matter or the colour
is not bright, features which denote faults and sickness in the wine). The eye
can transmit precise information about the state of health, conservation, structure
and type of wine. There are four things which must be taken into consideration
when looking at the wine: the clarity, colour, viscosity and effervescence (only
for semi-sparkling and sparkling wines).
Fill the glass a third full, holding
it by the stem or foot with the thumb and index finger, then bring it to eye level
and look at it against the light. This enables you to examine the clarity or cleanness
and ability to let light pass through it; the clearer and wine is the more stable
and healthy it is. In order to get a better idea of the transparency try to look
at a printed page through the glass.
The next step is observe the colour,
which gives an idea of the vivacity (lively or dull colour), intensity (deep,
dark, dull, clear, pale, weak) and the shades. Red wines vary in colour from purplish
red to ruby red, garnet red and orange red. Rosés may be pale pink, cherry
pink, dark pink and onion-skin. A white wine may vary in tone from paper white
to greenish yellow, straw, gold or amber.
In order to evaluate the viscosity
watch while the wine is being poured into the glass, then rotate it gently against
the sides of the glass. This gives an idea of the consistency; the more fluid
it is the lighter it is and the denser the wine the higher its alcohol content.
The alcohol content may also be judged by the so-called legs or tears of the wine.
These are curves which form on the sides of the glass due to the alcohol level.
The thicker they are and the more slowly they fall, the higher the alcohol level.
For semi-sparkling and sparkling wines one should assess the effervescence due
to carbon dioxide which is liberated when the wine is poured, causing both the
foam and the bubbles which the French refer to as 'perlage'. The foam should be
plentiful and dry, almost crackling, whilst the bubbles, especially in sparkling
wines, should be numerous, continuous, small and persistent. In still wines, effervescence
is a sign of a fault and indicates refermentation in the bottle, as the nose will
soon indicate with the smell of fermentation. The current trend is to sell clean,
clear wines without any substances which could in any way cause deposit.
At
the end of the tasting it is important that any deposit remains at the bottom
of the bottle and does not mix with the wine. When older wines are tasted it is
better if they are decanted first.
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