How to taste wine

There’s really only four simple steps to tasting wine. If you truly want to savor the product and use the steps below to learn how to properly taste the different wines that you’ll come across.

Step 1: Look!

Important questions to ask: How deep are the colors? Are the bold and dark or bright and festive?

From just looking at wine, there’s two really important pieces of information right off the bat we can gather: alcohol content and color. Let’s start with color. Take your glass and hold it up to some thing with a white background. This could be a napkin, paper towel or a wall. With reds looks for hues of red and purple and with whites look for hues of straw or hay and orange. 

The interesting thing about looking at your wine is that you can gauge how much alcohol is present.  Give your glass a few swirls and look for drops running down the sides of the interior of the glass (see above picture).   These are called the “legs” and the more of them, the higher the alcohol content. 

Step 2: Smell!

Similar to the first step, ask if the scents are earthy or mineral or fruity and buoyant.

This is part where we get to start looking for those subtle “hints” we read about on wine labels.  Give your glass a good swirl, put your whole nose in and take in a big breath through your nostrils. You might smell things like red fruits or citrus, earthy characteristics like tree bark and moss.  Anything you think of is right.  If you smell charcoal then who can prove you wrong? I usually try and pick out at least 3 different smells at this step. 

Step 3: Taste!

Like the second step, when you taste try to identify foods and scents that taste like the wine.

Now the fun part! Finally we’re going to taste.  This part starts with giving your glass a good swirl and taking in a sip.  Not a small sip and not a huge gulp but somewhere in between.  Swish the liquid around in your mouth a good amount and swallow or spit if you prefer. Side note: if you’re in a tasting room and you don’t like the wine it’s ok to spit. If you swallow “feel the burn” of the alcohol at the bottom of your throat.  The higher the alcohol, the more intense the burn.  You might taste things like grapefruits, strawberries, pears and apples. I once had someone say they could taste asparagus of all things.  But hey, how can I prove them wrong? 

Step 4: Think!

Is this wine a must have? What dishes could it go with? Or maybe it’s just good on its own.

As you’ve seen tasting wine is just a couple of steps.  The last step is a really simple one: decide if you like what you tried. Ask yourself if this wine could go well with a dish you want to make, or just drinkable on its own.  Is this wine unique or is it similar to other wines you’ve tasted? 

I follow these steps when I buy a new bottle and especially when I’m out winetasting. I found that following the steps allows me  to get a feel for the quality of the wine and determine if I want to buy a bottle.  Hopefully these steps will help you towards finding your next great bottle!