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15 February 2013

Wine Tasting - What is it all about?

Wine tasting is an activity one can take great pleasure in, where you not only use your taste buds, but all the other senses to get the full experience from a wine. Wine tasting is simply the examination and evaluation of a wine, which can be done by anyone as a part of a fun activity – or if you were seriously good; then as a job! Many of the professional wine tasters act as buyers for retailers to ensure that they stock and sell plenty of the yummy wine! Wine tasting can be done at parties, wineries, vineyards or even at your own home!

Usually wine tasting will take place in stages; appearance inspection, the aroma of the wine when ‘in the glass’, the sensations of the wine picked up when ‘in mouth’ and the aftertaste and effects that occur during the ‘finish’. These stages allow the tester to consider all the main factors surrounding a wine, its taste and presentation. There are variosu types of wines that you can get in to try wine testing with, from zero sulphite wine, red wine, white wine andd rose wines from many differnet countries and regions!  As a tester for the day (or maybe your new found career), you will be looking to answer a few questions during a wine to get an overall opinion of the wine - aside from tasty and not so tasty!

The Wine Tasting Process

The questions you should ask yourself are:
• What is the character and complexity of the wine like?
• How much potential the wine has for aging or drinking?
• When would you consume this wine?
• Any possible faults the wine may have

Blind Tasting

Blind wine tasting is not necessarily done by someone with impaired vision! It is a process that allows the taste senses to work their magic, by keeping the wine type, label region etc. secret from the taster. This allows the taster to make a sole judgement upon taste, rather than visual and eliminates any bias someone may have in the region or type of wine, unless they can distinctively taste each wine from one another.

Characteristics such as colour, price, reputation and geographic region have been known to influence a person’s opinion of a wine, and so blind tasting eliminates this. Frederic Brochet – a French researcher was said to have submitted a Bordeaux wine in two different bottles, where one had a label that said it was a very expensive brand, while the other bottle was labelled as if it was simply cheap table wine. The tasters reported that the expensive one was "woody, complex and round" while the "cheap" one was described by tasters as "short, light and faulty"...yet they were exactly the same! This gives us an idea of how any why someone’s opinion may be biased.

Wine tasting is more than simply gulping down a glass and deciding whether you liked it or not, it is a distinctive process that involves more than just your taste buds. Skilled tasters are able to make business decisions based on their wine tasting, and others are able to enjoy a time of fun wine tasting! It can be a very enjoyable experience for people hosting and attending wine tasting parties, whilst increasing your chances of finding new types of wine that you may just love!