How to Identify Color in Wine Tasting

You can tell a lot about wine from its appearance. The color or hue of a wine can help determine whether a wine is worth tasting. By evaluating a wine’s color, it is possible to determine positive and negative qualities about a wine. For example, you might want to know a wine’s age. By looking at the color, you will find as a wine ages, the color deepens and has less transparency. Or, you might notice a defect, such as a cloudy appearance in color.The color of wine is identified using three different positions. Use any of the following methods to identify a wine's color.

Things You'll Need

• Bottle of Wine
• corkscrew
• wine glass
• white cloth

Instructions

How to identify the color of wine

1. Place a glass of wine onto a white surface and look straight down into it.

2. Hold the base of a wine glass, and tilt the glass letting the wine slightly reach the rim against a white background.

3. Hold the base of a wine glass vertically to eye level against a white background.

4. Look for the deepest part of the wine called, the eye, for the most color.

5. Evaluate the color and give a name to the color of the wine. Examples would be, for a red wine, ruby red or, for a white wine, golden yellow.

6. Determine the color intensity of the wine on a scale of 1 to 10, one being the lightest and ten, the darkest. Try to determine the age of the wine.