Wine Tasting, all you need to know about (In short & In depth guides)

Time to get your nose in the glass! What does the wine smell of, and why? You’ll mainly be checking for:

• Wine flaws (like cork taint)
• Primary aromas (like fruit)
• Secondary aromas (like oak, or lees)
• Tertiary aromas (like forest floor, or truffles)

You can also give your wine a swirl in the glass to release more of the aromas before giving it another sniff – it may look a little strange, but it really works, we promise. Also, make sure to take your time – most good wines will have something substantial to give on the nose, so it’s worth taking your time over this step!

Primary aromas

These are the scents and smells that are mainly derived from the grape itself. These encompass most of the fruit-flavours associated with with any given variety or varieties, as well as other floral or herbal aromas considered essential characteristics. Fruit-flavours are caused principally by chemicals called esters, most prevalent in young wines, with a myriad other compounds responsible for the other flavours, such as terpenes (most connected to the aforementioned florals), phenols and ketones (flavours such as tannin and violets), and so on. Special mention goes to mineral flavours, which in certain white wines especially makes the difference between quite good and wow, yeah, really quite good.

In light white wines, the most common fruits to look out for will be things like citrus – lime, lemon, grapefruit etc – with fresh and herbal aromas such as elderflower and grass also relatively common. Richer white wines will often have fuller, more tropical fruits such as passionfruit and mango notes, while you’re also more likely to find some nuttiness and even smokiness than in lighter wines (though as with all things this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule).

Some particularly characteristic aromas include: fresh grass (sauvignon blanc – flintiness is also present in good, old world expressions); lychees (gewurztraminer); rosewater and grapes (moscato); lemon (unoaked chardonnay like Chablis, which can also show some exciting chalky, stony stuff); pears and almonds (arneis); grapefruit (lighter vermentino); light peach (garganega, the Soave grape!).

Light red wines are, naturally, marked by fruit flavours we might call ‘light red’ – think raspberries, strawberries, red cherries and so on – whereas fuller reds will likely show bigger, bolder, darker fruits like brambles and blackcurrants. Spiciness is more common in reds as well, helped along by heat from the higher alcohol. Interestingly, both lighter and fuller reds can carry redolence of unusual green flavours, which are always fun to notice.

Some typical red wine notes are: raspberries and strawberries (young pinot noir); cassis (cabernet sauvignon – look out as well for mint or eucalyptus from top-end new world varieties); plums and damsons (merlot); red cherries (sangiovese); black cherry (young nebbiolo); sour cherries (corvina, the main grape of Valpolicella classica!); raisins (corvina grapes that have undergone appassimento, as for Valpolicella Ripasso and Amarone).

Secondary aromas

These are derived from the winemaking process – the effects of a winemaker’s choice on the final wine. Of course there are nearly innumerable things a winemaker can do to influence the finished product – and indeed, doing as little as possible could do even more! Nevertheless, here are a few things to look out for in particular.

The first, and most common, come from something known as malolactic fermentation. Not technically fermentation, is the process by which malic acid – so named for its importance in the flavour of green apples – is converted into lactic acid, a considerably more alkaline compound present in milk (and which builds up naturally in the human body after a lot of exercise!). Virtually all red wines go through this process, and many whites do too. Characteristic of this process will be aromas of toast, hazelnut, occasionally even cocoa. However, it is important to remember that not all winemakers will desire malolactic effect, preferring to maintain a brighter profile (only about 20% of white wines undergo MLF).

Another very common practice is oak-ageing, again especially common for red wines but particularly notable when whites undergo the process. Oak is immediately recognisable, but here too there is variation: French oak is renowned for its buttery aromas, whereas American oak is altogether spicier and brasher, more redolent of vanilla and coconut. Oak settles and softens over time as well, so the more aggressive those notes, the younger the wine is likely to be. Though most reds go through the process, the whites that have done so exhibit those oaky characteristics to the most striking effect, with many white wines worldwide known for this (Montrachet and Meursault in Burgundy, for instance).

(As a side note, in a lot of Italy wine is aged in unusually large barrels made of Slavonian oak, a type known for its relative neutrality. So just because an Italian wine isn’t obviously giving off buttered toast fumes, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been in a barrel!)

But how can you do something by doing nothing? Well one way is by the use of the yeast itself, even after it’s fulfilled its fermentation purpose and died, by simply doing not very much and leaving the wine there on the dead yeast cells, stirring them occasionally. This is known as lees-ageing, and is often said to impart bready and nutty aromas, particularly to sparkling wines made in the Champagne method. But that’s another example of something mainly affecting white wines, and we mustn’t neglect how you can make your red wine better, and as luck would have it we’ve already come across one: good brettanomyces, the encouragement of which (and its good ethylguaiacols) is especially effective in reds in leaving those leathery, earthy notes.

But perhaps you may be interested to learn that, by not doing very much, you too can make a real difference to the development of wine aromas.

Tertiary aromas

Tertiary aromas are defined as those produced by the effects of bottle-ageing. As with lees-ageing, it’s not quite accurate to say this is done by doing nothing exactly, as the correct method and atmosphere of storage is important, but the secret ingredients are nonetheless simple: time and patience. Not all wine is meant to be aged – many are intended to be drunk young. However, wines built to be set down and left can leave extraordinary rewards in the form of these tertiary aromas, or ‘bouquet’ in wine-speak.

There are really too many to list properly – indeed, a reason why ageable wine is so highly valued is the sheer possibility of what you might expect from it – but there are a few rules of thumb. First, you expect bold fruit notes to diminish over time – in cabernet sauvignon, strong aromas of cassis, say, or blackcurrant, will soften over time to become less bold.

Second, many secondary aromas also are likely to diminish dramatically, with more aggressive oak or prominent lees characteristics likely to integrate into the overall flavours of the wine.

Finally, and most importantly, you can expect tertiary aromas to be non-fruit in character, and indeed not normally things you would associate with being edible. Furthermore, certain wines are famously characteristic for certain tertiary aromas that develop in great bottles: for instance, great Barolo is famous for particular tar and roses notes; Amarone, by contrast, is likely to acquire extraordinary cigar box and forest floor characteristics. Every wine is different, every bottle too, but you can still expect certain things from certain grapes, styles and regions.

There are, of course, myriad different smells and aromas in wine, far too many to list, but we hope you get the idea. We’ll return to them later – but for now, on with the tasting process!

Swirling

Swirling the wine around your glass may just look like something for show, something that looks quite pretty to pass the time, but it actually serves a technical function. The idea is that you should take your glass, look it at, take a sniff, swirl it, then take another, with one good reason – oxygen. See, swirling (otherwise known as aeration) gets oxygen into the wine and causes some alcohol to dissipate, and oxygen reacts with the chemicals in the wine that produce aromas with the effect of changing and intensifying them. Remember, oxygen changes wine, indeed eventually into vinegar, and this can be utilised by the taster/swirler/aerator to bring different flavours out of the wine. Aerating also brings out the aforementioned wine legs, as well as helping overcome the ‘trapped sulphur’ wine fault. Not bad for a showy little movement!

Sipping

And so, to the point of the whole thing. You’ve looked at the wine, you’ve sniffed it, you’ve thrown it around the glass, sniffed it again, considered the effects of aeration on the Marangoni-Gibbs effect, and now finally it’s time to drink some of it. What should you look out for? Well, as with every stage of wine tasting it’s both straightforward and massively variegated. Here’s a small breakdown.

How to drink

This should go without saying but, really, try not to down your wine! True appreciation is a slow process, and even if you don’t like the wine it’s better to go slow and determine exactly why. Plus drinking too quickly is very not good for you! So tip one: go slow.

Tip two: try and make sure the wine gets all around the mouth. You have taste receptors all over the tongue, so put them all to work! To extract maximum flavour experience from the wine, maximum surface area is worth using.

The third and final tip is one that, like swirling, you may not want to do, but we promise it really helps. In fact it is exactly like swirling, in that it involves aeration. That thing you see people do, puckering their lips and sucking in air with wine in their mouths? Another way of getting oxygen into the wine to draw the uttermost last flavour out of the liquid. It may not look very dignified, but trust us – if you do this, you will notice instantly the sharp increase in what you can taste and how intensely you taste it. This is the way of winetasting: not always the most dignified, but anything is worth doing for flavour.

What to look for

Flavours, tastes and sensations

So that word: flavour. This is a tricky one. As we’ve already said, an enormous percentage of what you taste is in fact smelled through the nose, in a process technically known as retronasal olfaction (effectively, smelling things that are already in your mouth – another reason why in-mouth aeration is so important!). Technically, flavour is not the same as taste, and our tongues can only taste the famous five of sweet, sour, bitter, umami, and salt. Everything else (which is to say, all the aromas listed above) are flavours that aren’t so much tasted as smelled.

That said, retronasal olfaction is an important part of tasting – or if you prefer flavour-detecting – the wine. Everything and more from our aromas section will be there, and so it’s crucial to pay attention to them. Wine will usually press a few of the taste buttons too, mainly sour, sweet and sometimes bitter. But more on that later.

The things you’ll really notice first about wine will be more to do with sensation than with taste or flavour, however. The two principle culprits are acidity, present in all wine and noticeable to varying degrees, and tannin, present mainly in red wine and again, to varying degrees.

Acidity you’ll know immediately – it stimulates saliva production, giving wine its characteristic mouthwatering quality – the greater the acidity, the more the mouth waters. Acidity gives what in the wine world is called freshness, and is crucial for many reasons: it is usually a pre-requisite for long bottle-ageing, and judging the right level is absolutely vital for food pairing. It’s an integral part of the structure of wine, and helps identify certain grapes (in whites, for instance, riesling is known for its sharper tang) and indeed whole regions and countries (Italian reds, for example, are marked by higher acidity than average). White wines are generally more known for acidity, but that’s hardly to say that reds lack it in general, or indeed can afford to necessarily. Wines with too much acidity can be called sharp, whereas insufficient acidity can get the wine labelled ‘flabby’. It’s all about balance.

Tannins, however, really do apply mainly to red wine, with a few interesting exceptions. Tannins are a form of polyphenol found in the skins of grapes, and as red wines gain their colour from maceration with those skins, it is they which gain the most tannin.

They are effectively the opposite of acidity – where acidity makes the mouth water, tannin combines with chemicals in the saliva to dry the mouth out (similar chemicals have a similar effect in tea). Tannins are responsible for, in wine-speak, structure – the greater the tannin, the more structure it is said to have, and are often just as big a contributor to the ageing of red wines as acidity. Many grapes are known for their great tannic structure, which is often associated with those grapes known as good agers – cabernet sauvignon, nebbiolo, and so on. Again, balance is everything, and many grapes are renowned for their lack of tannin as much as anything (perhaps most famously pinot noir, which is nonetheless a great ager).

And can white wines have tannins? Well yes, through two ways. The first, and less common, is those so-called ‘orange wines’ and other skin-contact whites. The other is another way reds also gain tannin – from the oak barrel. Oak imparts significant tannin to wine (the smaller the barrel, the more significant), and is another reason oak-ageing is often considered desirable, as a contributor to bottle-ageing potential.

The third and fourth things to look out for can sometimes be easy to confuse, but are also quite distinct. First, sweetness. Pretty self-explanatory – the most obvious encounter with a flavour receptor you’ll find is that of sugar with the tastebuds adapted for the perception of sweetness. A wine is considered dry if it has under 9 grams per litre of sugar; 30-35g/l, it starts to become noticeably sweet; a serious dessert wine like Sauternes can be anything between 100-200g/l and even beyond; and the sweetest dessert wine known is the mega-sweet sherry known as Pedro Ximenez, which generally has around 400g/l of sugar. Which really is very very sweet.

And the fourth one – well, it’s alcohol! The most important thing to remember is that alcohol carries flavour. The bigger the alcohol content, the more intense flavours (as opposed to tastes or sensations like sweetness or tannin) are likely to be. Wine people refer to this as body – generally described in some way as light, medium, or full – and is one of the true fundamentals.

And the confusion? Well, sometimes high alcohol which isn’t well-balanced in the wine can leave a bitter-sweet sensation, even though alcohol on its own is odourless. Sometimes this leads people to believe a wine is sweet, but a side-by-side comparison with a true sweet wine, high in sugar, will make this mix-up easy to avoid.

The three stages of wine

Which brings us to the end of how to taste wine, so why not finish with, well, the finish! Technically each mouthful of wine is divided into three stages: the attack, the first wave of flavours and sensations immediately after the sip; the mid-palate, perhaps the bulk of the wine experience in which you detect most of the aromas we’ve listed here; and the finish, which we will linger on here for a second.

A wine is defined as having a long finish if, after the wine has left the mouth, aromas and textures linger on for a long time anyway. Long finishes are frequently taken as a sign of quality (though of course, everything is relative – an overly rich wine might overwhelm a lighter food in a pairing, for instance). There are a variety of wine words associated with finish, such as clean, crisp or fresh (used to describe wines with strong acidity), persistent (for wines whose finish just keeps going and going), drying (for particularly tannic wines), short or modest (for wines whose finish doesn’t drag on), as well as any particular flavour and aroma notes that you, the taster, can detect.

Bonus step: listening

Well we did say that wine-tasting involves all the senses, and this one seemed to have got missed out somehow. But surely we’re not saying you should put that glass of wine up to your ear and listen to it? Are we about to tell you that the sound it makes when it swirls can tell you something?

Well, to be blunt, no. But you’re not meant to listen to the wine, even to the lovely sound of a cork being pulled – rather, you should listen to each other, to your friends around the table. Wine is a social thing, a subjective thing, and someone might tell you something you hadn’t thought of before, like if a sauvignon blanc smells of a meadow after a storm, or if that isn’t the faintest touch of asparagus in that glass of Abruzzo cerasuolo. And as is often the case, the power of suggestion is mighty: you’d be amazed at what you might detect once someone has pointed it out to you (yes meadow! yes asparagus!).

Because that’s the joy of wine, a social experience from bottom to top, from conviviality to aroma ideas, to be enjoyed, hated, debated, discussed – whatever it might be, but always best in company.