How to Taste Wine

Video Transcript

"How to taste wine. We begin by trying out the white wine. The key thing about tasting wine is that you need to - it's an all-encompassing thing, you need to look at colors of the wine, the aroma of the wine, the taste of the wine. Those are the three essential elements to determining the quality of the wine and also to enjoying wine. The first thing we do is we pour a very small sample of wine into a glass. What we really want to do is to look at its color. In this case we're using a white wine. You would ideally use a tissue or a napkin to see the color of the wine. That way you can find out how old the wine is, the darker for example for a white wine the more yellow it is, the more likely it's more aged. And the lighter colored will sort of reflect a youthful wine. You would see in the white wine a young white wine green reflections or hints of green in the color as well as a light straw yellow color. And that shows it's a wine - its depth and that it's young. Once you've done - looked at the color and you're happy that it's a nice, clear color. You swirl the wine in the glass, now there are ways of doing this, the key is not to get it all over yourself. An experienced wine passer will know where they're balancing it and can really give it a vigorous swirl. But if you want to be cautious you can do it on the table and then you won't spill the wine no matter how vigorously you shake it. Why do we do that? We do that to release - to spread the wine on the glass surface to release as much of the aroma into the glass and we - in this case we've used a small tasting sample, giving us as much opportunity to hold the aroma of the wine in the glass. Tasting wine, eighty percent of the tasting of the wine is the aroma, twenty percent is on the tongue. On the tongue you get to taste things like the bitterness which is in the center back of the tongue, the acidity side of the tongue, the sweetness, the front tip of the tongue, and saltiness, the front top of the tongue. So, first thing once you've swirled your wine, you've had a look at it, first thing to do is to draw in the aroma, from the glass. It doesn't matter how much noise you make, the thing is you get as much aroma into your - running over your sensory senses in the nose, so... Stick your nose right into the glass so you don't pick up any other aromas. And next thing after you have the aroma in your nose is to taste on the tongue. If you're tasting quite a lot of wines you really do need to spit out the wine. Two reasons for doing that. Once the wine gets to the back of the throat and beyond the back of the throat, it stays there so if you're picking up another wine to try, it will - this wine you've tasted will influence the next wine. So take a sip in the mouth, and then swirl it all around the mouth. At the same time as you're taking a sip, see if you can get some of the aroma in, and then just swirl it around the mouth, bringing oxygen through the mouth. And then spit it out and see what flavors you pick up from that. For example, is it a sweet wine? How much acidity from the side? How tonic it is from the feeling of the inside of your mouth? Does it feel rough inside of your mouth? With the acidity, do you feel like you're salivating, are you bringing up more saliva that also is the acidity? The sweetness you've picked up from the front of the palette. And is it bitter as you bring it to the back of the throat, is it bitter? Inevitably there will be some wine left in the mouth so you can swallow a hint just to get an idea of it. Red wine is exactly the same but you're also looking in this case at the texture of the wine in terms of the amount of tannin. White wine tends not to have a lot of tannin. So here you are looking at the fruit, the acidity, the balance between the two. And also whether it's oxidized, whether it's in good condition. With a red wine you're looking for the same things, the fruit, the acidity, but on top of that you're looking at some of the textural effects of the tannin, so those are the basics for tasting wine. And you spit when you drink several wines, or you drink a smaller amount when you're in a restaurant to see the full effect of the wine. So that's how we taste wine."