Appearance – Nose – Palate – Conclusion

By Author: sunil chauhan
Total Articles: 1
Comment this article

Learning to taste wine should be fun, and there are many ways you can go about enhancing your wine tasting ability. I am in the Queenstown Wine Tour business where I take hundreds of new wine tasters on guided wine tours every year and am who frequently asked how to learn more about the art of wine tasting. I have discussed in previous articles exploring wine regions and running wine tastings. Now it is time to get into a bit of the nitty gritty of wine tastings.

Brief descriptions of wine tasting structure

Colour – Clarity of wine, depth of colour, actual colour, and other observations – aging, bubbles
Smell – Condition, intensity of smell, development of smell from aging, Type of smell character – fruity, spicy, smoky …
Taste – Intensity of taste, taste characters, sweetness of wine, acidity (how sharp is it), Is it full or light body, how much alcohol, how long does flavour stay in mouth
Conclusion – Quality – how good is wine, Maturity – how old is it (if tasting blind it is fun to try and guess age), Origins – if tasting blind try guessing where it might come from, ...
... Value – does quality match price tag

Simple 20 Point Scoring System

Colour (3) Smell (6) Taste (7) Conclusion(4) Total
Score
Wine One
Wine Two

Tasting the Wines
Tasting wine is like being a detective trying to solve a mystery. As the detective finds new clues that add another piece to the jigsaw, early on the jig saw doesn’t make much sense but as more and more clues are found the big picture is revealed. Work your way through each stage of the tasting form and try not to jump to conclusions, I prefer to describe a wines characters broadly to start then refine my notes as I go. I use all my early descriptives to lead to a sound conclusion based on my facts.

There is a myriad of books in the market for tasting and scoring wines but to start just keep it simple. See my other articles for more information.

Philip Green UK WSET Diploma of Wine
A passionate traveller and wine collector Philip owns and manages Queenstown wine tour company Appellation Central Wine Tours, New Zealand

How to Taste Wine