Wine Tasting Method

How To Taste Wine
Wine tasting is a sensory examination and evaluation of wine. A professional wine tasters use a constantly-evolving formal terminology which is used to describe the range of perceived flavours, aromas and general characteristics of a wine. A wine overall quality assessment, based on the examination, further careful description and comparison with recognized standards, both with respect to other wines in its price range and according to known factors pertaining to the region or vintage if it is typical of the region or diverges in style or uses certain wine-making techniques, such as barrel fermentation or malolactic fermentation, or other remarkable unusual characteristics. Whereas wines are regularly tasted in isolation, a wine quality assessment is more objective when performed alongside several other wines, in what are known as tasting flights. Wines may be deliberately selected for their vintage or proceed from a single winery, to better compare vineyard and vintages, respectively, in order to promote an unbiased analysis, bottles and even glasses may be disguised in a blind tasting, to rule out any prejudicial awareness of either vintage or winery.
To ensure impartial judgment of a wine, it should be served blind that is without the taster having a look at the label or bottle shape. Blind tasting may also involve serving the wine from a black wine glass to mask the colour of the wine. A taster’s judgment can be prejudiced by knowing details of a wine, such as geographic origin, price, reputation, colour and other consideration in the wine tasting.
The vertical and horizontal tastings are wine tasting events that are arranged to highlight differences between similar wines. In a vertical tasting, different vintages of the same wine type from the same winery are tasted. This emphasizes differences between various vintages. While in a horizontal tasting, the wines are all from the same vintage but are from different wineries. Keeping wine variety or type and wine region the same helps emphasize differences in winery styles.
There are five basic steps in tasting wine; colour, swirl, smell, taste, and savour. It is also known as the five Ss which are See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, and Savour. A taster must look for clarity, varietal character, integration, expressiveness, complexity, and connectedness. A wine colour will also be judge by putting it against a white background. The wine glass is put at an angle in order to see the colours. Colours can give the taster clues to the grape variety, and whether the wine was aged in wood.