How to Use Wine Tasting Jargon

By eHow Hobbies, Games & Toys Editor

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A wine tasting expert not only needs to taste plenty or wine, he also needs to use the correct words when he talks about it. It's easy to learn how to talk like a wine tasting expert. You just need to learn some of the common jargon.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Learn to identify a well-balanced wine. Balance, in wine tasting jargon, means the combination of acidity, sweetness, tannins and alcohol in a wine. A well-balanced, expensive wine will not have any one of these characteristics dominating another.

Step2

Use words like "smooth" and "round" reflect wines with little acidity. However, these are more acidic than "flat" and "dull" wines. Wines with a little more acidity are said to be "crisp" or "vivacious." Yet, highly acidic wines can taste sour.

Step3

Identify a wine's sweetness by simply saying whether you think it is sweet or not. Sweetness is the easiest characteristic for an expert wine taster to identify.

Step4

Talk about the after-taste of the wine. The after-taste is caused by tannins, the roughage (grape seeds and stems) that wine makers include in the fermentation process. Full-flavored red wines have high amounts of tannins.

Step5

Comment on the alcohol content in the wine. Wines of any color are seldom more than 14 percent alcohol. If you can taste the alcohol, it means there is too much and the wine is not well-balanced.

Step6

Notice the "body" of the wine. An expert wine taster uses the word "body" to refer to the thickness and feel of the wine. A heavy tasting wine is called full-bodied. Other words that describe wine body include "light," "medium" or "full."

Step7

Note the finish of the wine. The finish is the aftertaste or final impression. A "clean finish" usually refers to a wine that evaporates off the mouth.

Tips & Warnings

Learn the trick to identifying alcohol content before you drink. Swirl your wine in a glass, notice how well it sticks to the edges of the glass. The lines it makes on the glass is called "legs." The more legs a wine has, the more alcohol it has.