How To Taste Wine and Develop Your Palette
Drinking and enjoying wine requires much more than simply sipping on it. If you want to become a more seasoned wine expert, you need to be able to taste wine like one and develop your palate to improve your wine-drinking experience. Here are a few tips to turn you into a wine connoisseur in no time.
How to Taste
Being able to fully taste wine not only improves the experience, but also allows you to become better and pairing wine with meals, and snacks, or find a wine that is perfect to pair with vapes.
Look at the Wine
The first thing you should do is look at the wine. Look at the color, opacity, and viscosity (wine legs); you can find out a lot about a wine simply by looking at it. There is no need to spend more than a few seconds doing this, but it is still an important step.
Smell
Next is the smell phase, and is arguably one of the most important steps in the tasting process. When smelling wine, you start with the big picture, and then focus in on the smaller details.; this will give you a more complete idea of all the wine’s nuances.
In wine tasting, the primary aromas are the ones that you often smell first; the grapes, fruits, herbs, etc. The secondary aromas are the wines that come from the winemaking process, such as cheese rinds, nuts, or “stale” beer.
The tertiary aromas come from the barrels and are often more subtle. Vanilla, wood, tobacco, etc, are all examples of flavors that come from the barrels the wine is stored in.
Taste It
When you taste the wine, you are looking for the different flavors, the texture, and the length of the wine. Roll the wine around your mouth and get it spread across your tongue to ensure all parts of it are hit. This will allow you to taste sour, sweet, bitter, etc.
It is important to pay attention to everything you are tasting each sip but, also the texture of the wine. Wines that are “thicker” are often higher in tannins and are riper, such as red wines.
Finally, the “length” of the wine is how long you can still taste it after you have had a sip. A great wine will have beginning, middle, and end flavors, all of which change as you are sipping and once you have finished the sip.
Think About the Flavors
Finally, take the time to think about what you just tasted. Don’t rush in for another sip, but rather take a step back and analyze each flavor and nuance of the wine. Is the wine too sweet or too sour? Is it balanced? Is it unique or forgettable? These are a few of the questions you should be asking yourself.
Tips for Developing Your Palate
When it comes to developing your palate, there are a few tips to remember to not only improve it for wine tasting, but for drinking anything and wine and food pairings.
Slow Down
Firstly, take your time when drinking. You miss out on a ton of flavors when you just mindlessly sip on your drink. Instead, slow down the sips and let the drink linger; many wines evolve as you drink and taste them; a flavor you first tasted will change as you are about to swallow the sip.
Pay Attention to the Flavors
Pay attention to each and every flavor you are tasting. No wine has just one flavor, and if that is all you can taste, you may not be giving the wine the attention to detail is deserves. As stated earlier, take the time to process each flavor you are tasting as you sip the wine.
Isolate Flavors
It is also important to isolate the more subtle flavors in each sip. Many of these flavors aren’t there by accident, and being able to taste them and form a more complete picture of the wine allows you to enjoy it how it should be enjoyed.
Work Passed Flavors
One mistake that many people make when tasting is that they get hung up on one flavor for too long. There are many flavors, such as anise or wood, that can be strong to some people, and they lose the other flavors.
Make the effort to taste a flavor, but to then move past it and get to the next flavors. Once again, wine isn’t just one flavor, and if that is all you are focussing on, you are missing out on everything else it is offering.
Create a Flavor Memory
To improve your overall palate, it isn’t enough to simply taste and drink as many different wines as possible. You need to be able to analyze and remember all of the information you learn from each wine you drink.
Creating a wine “flavor bank” or memory will not only help you find flavors and wines that you love, but it will also help you when testing new wines. You will know that a wine from a certain vineyard will have a touch of wood or tobacco because you know their barrels, etc.
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