How to Do a Real Wine Tasting With Ratings
Professional wine tasting is difficult, because no standard method is used around the world. Wine tasting requires the taster to rank the different facets of the wine, including the appearance, aroma, flavor and mouth feel. Many different attributes lurk within these facets, and the type of scoring system chosen for the tasting dictates how many categories the tasters evaluate. Start off your wine tastings with only a few wines until you become comfortable with the protocol, and then expand the number of wines being tasted. Concentrating long enough to evaluate 20 or more wines can be very difficult for amateur wine tasters. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- White tablecloth
- ISO standard wine glasses
- Spittoons
- Water pitchers
- Water glasses
- Water crackers (optional)
- Scoring sheets
- Writing utensils
Instructions
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Place a white tablecloth or large sheet of white paper on the table. To keep the wines in order, draw circles where the wine glasses are placed with corresponding numbers.
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2
Place the ISO standard wine glasses on the marked places on at each person's setting. ISO glasses are the standard glasses for professional wine tasting. Each tasting place should also have a spittoon, small glass and water pitcher full of water. A plate of water crackers can also be provided, although this is optional.
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3
Open red wines an hour before serving, and open white wines just before serving. Pour 40mL wine into the tasting glass. The wine bottle should be covered in a cloth bag so the tasters do not know what wines they are scoring. Ensure that for each person the same wine is poured in each position -- wine number one for each person must be the same wine, and so on. Do not mix up the pouring order. Special pouring spouts can be used to pour the same amount into each glass, which is much easier than measuring out 40mL each time.
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4
Place a wine scoring sheet at each place. Many different wine scoring systems will work. The Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast scales use 100-point systems, UC Davis and Jancis Robinson developed a 20-point scale, there is the five-star scale rating or you can come up with your own. The taster will be evaluating the appearance, color, aroma, bouquet, acidity, sugar, body, flavor and quality of the wine, providing a score for each of the different categories.
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5
Demonstrate how the tasters should evaluate each wine. The first step is to examine its appearance. Hold the wine up against the white tablecloth or a sheet of white paper to evaluate the color and clarity of the wine.
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Swirl the wine in the glass to incorporate oxygen into the wine and to release the aroma into the headspace of the glass. Stick your nose into the headspace, and breathe in. Evaluate the different aromas you smell.
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Take a mouthful of the wine, about 5 to 10mL and hold it in your mouth. Swirl the wine around your mouth to incorporate air and allow it to touch all areas of the tongue and mouth. Spit the wine into the spittoon. Evaluate the flavor and mouth feel categories on the scoring sheet.
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Tally up the scores for each of the wines. See which wines received the highest scores and those that were lacking in specific categories. Reveal to the tasters which wines they were tasting.
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References
- Photo Credit four wine glasses with white wine image by Arkady Ten from Fotolia.com
