Notions of how to taste wine

Tasting: pay the utmost attention whilst tasting, in order to appreciate and express the qualities and shortcomings of a wine.

According to Peynaud, the wine expert, wine tasting involves studying, analysing, describing, defining, judging and rating.

As this is an analysis performed with the senses (mouth, nose and eyes) it is subject to a certain degree of subjectivity: influenced by our mood, average quality of the samples analysed and the number of wines tasted.

Two types of wine tasting can be distinguished:

• Hedonistic wine tasting, as a pleasurable experience of drinking a good wine. This is generally practiced amongst friends.
• Technical wine tasting, which is of a more critical nature and which attempts to study and describe all the sensory reactions produced by a wine, by trying to explain these on the basis of a person's oenological knowledge (oenological «culture» of the wine taster).

When tasting wine, there are a series of rules which, to some extent, limit the subjectivity indicated above:

Rules for the wine-taster

• Be in good shape (without being tired, not having a cold or headache ...)
• Do not eat during the wine tasting, without forgetting the old saying "She was given it with cheese" implying that cheese was used to sell poor wines. At the most, a bit of bread.
• Only drink a small amount of wine, to prevent intoxication and maintain a critical spirit until the end of the wine tasting.
• Do not wear perfumes or smoke.
• Train regularly to refresh your memory.
• Be relaxed.

Rules on the tasting environment

• The room must be well lit. When using artificial lighting, the colour shall be as natural as possible (no dim green fluorescent lights).
• In addition, the room must be well ventilated, cool (wine has alcohol and gives the impression of heat), and with no strange odours (tobacco, fritters, air refreshers, etc).
• Always taste the wine in an adequate glass that is transparent and has no strange odours. If in doubt, drink a sip first.

Each individual is different: when faced with the same stimulus, the responses can be very different from one person to another (due to a genetic difference).