First off, proper or not, this is still my ideal of tasting:
However, since I usually have to get out of the bed the day after I drink wine, and since staging my own wine tasting of six different wines would mean opening up six different bottles...I usually just take them one at a time if I'm at home. That said, anyone wanna come over and do a "wine tasting" and be classy together?
Boozehound humor aside, there are a few simple things you can do to get more out of a wine. First, before you even open a bottle...check out something like this, which is a nice little chart helping give some basic words to help you describe what you smell and taste. People always make fun of wine geeks for all of the purple prose (heh, perhaps appropriate) spilled out (dear God, somebody stop the puns) over what they're tasting...but I gotta tell ya, it's a lot easier to notice the details in a wine's aroma and flavor if you've got a bigger vocabulary than "it tastes like wine." For the hardcore, there's even a super snazzy wine aroma wheel that can really help you jazz up your word choice.
At any rate, even without putting some handy terms in your brain, you can really appreciate some of the details of the wine just by following these steps (freely and openly borrowed from many, but especially Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan):
-Tilt your wine glass (ideally over a white surface like a napkin) and take a look. What color is it? And no, "it's white" or "it's red" is not quite what we're going for, smartass. Is it a pale, straw-like yellow? Is it more of a gold? For a red, can you see your fingers if you put your free hand on the far side of the glass? This might seem trivial, but it can tell us something about what we're about to drink. A very light colored white wine, for example, is probably from a colder climate...which can give us some clues about how it might taste. For serious wine experts, this first stage is huge in helping narrow down what wine they're about to drink in a blind tasting...a lighter, more translucent red is never going to be from a heavy duty, big bruiser like cabernet sauvignon. So...look at your wine!
-Next, swirl it and give it a sniff. Don't be afraid to put your nose right there in the glass. Maybe don't do this if you've got a really nasty cold...snot plus wine is not a winning combo. What do you smell? If you're good at improv, you can probably start naming smells off without too much prompting, but if that's not your bag, one of those lists like the one linked to above can be a Godsend. You'll discover that certain kinds of grapes/wines from those grapes have certain smells that are more typical of them. Gewurztraminer smells like lychee, flowers, and tropical fruit; reds from southern France are often very earthy and herbal (think food from southern France or Italy), with even some olive and leather notes. Even if you don't care about matching smells up with specific wines, you'll still have a better idea of what you're about to taste.
-Then, give it another swirl and take a sip - not a big one, but enough to get a good taste. What do you notice? First off, flavors. Do you get citrus (lemon? lime? grapefruit?), apple (what kind?), berries (which ones?), chocolate? How sweet is it? Then, think about how it felt in your mouth - was it really light, was it heavy, was it kind of in between? How well did it coat your mouth? Was it smooth and soft, was it crisp and acidic, did it feel almost like something was coating or gripping your tongue? These are all a part of the picture here - flavors, structure, body/mouthfeel, acidity. They all come out on the palate.
-Lastly, how long does the flavor of the wine linger in your mouth? Does it stick around for a while, maybe even gelling and getting a little more complex as it sits? Or, does it just kinda go away quickly? Savor it and see.
I have but one hard-and-fast rule for tasting wine...you should be enjoying it! Seriously. That quote from the Psalms isn't this blog's sub-title by accident - wine is to be enjoyed. If following a process or grasping for words and flavors and whatnot makes drinking a new wine stressful, then just drink the wine how you want and follow your arrow wherever it points. Here's a related, gratuitous Kacey Musgraves video, because I can:
If you're looking for a nice, easy test wine to try out these tasting skills with, I'll give you a white and a red recommendation. For a white, try a gewurztraminer...I'd personally suggest something from Alsace in France (I love Trimbach, personally, but it's a little spendier), but any gewurztraminer will do...there are some really budget-friendly ones grown in the US. Wherever it comes from, there is NO mistaking it for something else. Have fun with it - what do you see, what do you smell, what do you taste? For a red, go track down a bottle of Apothic Dark - snobs might knock me for being so "common" as to be pushing a cheap blend you can find at Target, but 1. screw that attitude, 2. it's tasty, and 3. it's got some scents and flavors that are SUPER easy to name.
What are you waiting for? Get to drinking!
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