We will explain the process involved in wine tasting, hopefully enabling you to rely on your own feelings and observations by engaging your senses of sight, smell, and taste. Perhaps you will be able to also assist others to decide if these might be selections they, too, would enjoy.

Hue (Color) and Clarity

Let’s begin by taking a look at the wine. The glass needs to be held by the stem to stop the wine from getting warm. Hold it at half an arms’ length against a white or light background. What is the hue (color) of the wine? Does it look light, dark, or thick and rich? A good quality wine should not be turbid (cloudy) or hazy, it should be clear and bright, appearing light and fresh.

Aroma

Smelling the wine is the next and perhaps most complex phase of the process. There are literally hundreds of components contributing to the aroma, so let your nose investigate. After all, the sense of smell has been proven far more influential to taste than the tongue itself. Swirling the wine in your glass by gently rotating your wrist, try to smell the fragrance being released before you even bring the glass to your nose. This swirling serves multiple purposes. It allows the wine to breathe (interact with the oxygen in the air), it also reveals the alcohol content as the wine leaves trails on the sides of the glass.

Now lift the glass to your nose and inhale. Do you smell fruit, flowers, or maybe wet wood? Does it smell ripe… fresh… stale… or even dusty? Maybe you smell a hint of spices, chocolate, or berries. Don’t be afraid of sounding uneducated, there are no right or wrong answers. Simply use flavors you are familiar with to describe what you smell. The fact that you smell it means it is there, valid, and valuable to the tasting process.

Taste

Finally, take a sip of the wine and, without swallowing, hold it in your mouth for a moment. Although the tongue has over 10,000 taste buds that enable us to decipher between different compounds in our food and drink, there are actually only 4 basic flavors the tongue is able to detect: sweet, sour, salt, and bitter.

You will first taste the sweet in the wine on the tip of your tongue, followed by the acidity on the sides of your tongue. Shortly after “swishing” the wine, your tongue will identify the tannins, that cause a “sticking” feeling or dry feeling on your tongue. As you swallow, exhale slightly through your nose for a more vivid taste.

Keep notes of the wines as you taste them, recording their hue and clarity, aroma, and taste. There may be many wines or only a few that stand out along the tasting path, but the most exceptional wines are the ones that improve with each phase of tasting. So sit back in a Magic Mist Limousine, open a bottle and relax; let your senses embark on a delightful journey defined by your sensory perception!

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