Let's start by getting one thing straight: Anyone can taste wine, all you need is a glass of wine and your brain.

Sometimes you get the feeling that wine tasting is a complicated and difficult science. It is true that the world of wine offers endless possibilities for exploration, but it is not very difficult to get started with wine tasting, and we will guarantee that with a few simple tools you can have some fantastic wine experiences.

In this guide, you will learn how to taste wine in 4 basic steps. These "tricks" are also used by professionals to refine their palates and sharpen their ability to remember wines. It sounds complicated, but is actually quite simple to understand and can help anyone improve their sense of taste.

How do you taste wine?

1. See

Look at the wine once it is poured into the glass. Check the color, how saturated the color is (opacity) and what the viscosity is (the "curtains" in the glass).

What do you get from looking at the wine?

The appearance, color, and opacity of the wine can tell you about the age of the wine, the possible grape varieties, the amount of acid, alcohol, sugar, and even give hints about what climate the wine was grown in (warm/cold).

Age: As wines age, they tend to change color towards yellow and brown colors. Red wines also tend to become more transparent.

Possible grape varieties: Here are some common hints you can use when looking at the color of the wine:

• Nebbiolo-based wines will have a transparent brick color
• Red wine containing Merlot will have a faint orange rim
• Malbec will often have a magenta/pink rim
• Young Syrah from a cool climate will have a bluish tinted rim

Alcohol and Sugar: the "curtains" in the glass can tell us whether the wine has a high or low alcohol percentage and/or a high or low sugar content.

2. Fragrance

Aroma, Bouquet, Fragrance; dear child, it has many names, but one of the most important things when tasting wine is to smell it first.

Practice swirling the wine around in the glass; start gently so that the wine stays in the glass. Swirl the wine around in the glass helps to release the aromatics that make up the scent. Hold the glass slightly at an angle and smell the wine; you can alternate between a small sniff or a deep breath; what differences appear in the scent when you do this?

Select at least 2 scents and take your time to identify them. There are 3 types of aromas in wine:

• Primary aromas come from the grape and contain fruit, herbal and floral notes.
• Secondary aromas originate from fermentation.
• Tertiary aromas come from the aging process initiated by the wine's storage and can smell like vanilla or something nutty.

Why is the aroma of wine important?

For the trained nose, the aroma can tell most of the wine's story; the grape type, whether the wine is barrel-aged or not; where the wine comes from and how old it is.

Train your nose

While some people are naturally gifted with a keen sense of smell, that doesn't mean the rest of us mortals are cut off from enjoying wine. Like other senses, our sense of smell can be trained and refined. The best way to do this is to use your sense of smell as much as possible. Smell the vegetables in the supermarket and smell the ingredients when you cook.

The aroma kit

A great help can be an aroma kit - a collection of spices and herbs - that can help you identify the different scents. You can buy one ready-made, but you can easily make your own.

Here is an example of an aroma kit for red wine, we use dried spices as they last longer, but fresh ones can of course also be used. The spices should be stored in airtight containers so they don't lose their scent.

• Anise
• Black pepper
• White pepper
• Cardamom
• Nutmeg
• Dill
• Vanilla
• Oregano
• Dried mushrooms
• If you can get hold of a spoonful of soil from the garden, this is also a good addition to the aroma kit.

Where does the aroma of wine come from?

Aromas like "leather" or "toast" are not ingredients in the wine, but consist of natural aromas called stereoisomers that are released when the alcohol in the wine evaporates. There can be hundreds of different aromas in a glass, which means that two people can easily identify their own scent in a wine and both be right.

The 3 aroma types of wine

Primary aromas: Derived from the grape variety and the climate it is grown in. For example, Barbera will typically smell of anise or licorice. Very generally, you can say that the fruit aromas in wine are the primary aroma.

Secondary aromas: Come from the fermentation of the wine. An example that many may be familiar with is the sour scent you can find in dry Champagne, an aroma we often call "bread" or "yeast". The sour aromas are found to a greater or lesser extent in all types of wine. They can be very special, such as Sauvignon Blanc, whose distinctive scent can best be described as... cat pee!

Tertiary aromas: Come from the aging process of the wine. These aromas come from oxidation, oak storage, and bottle aging. The most common example of this is the "vanilla" aroma often found in wines aged in oak. More subtle examples of tertiary aromas are the nutty aromas found in vintage champagne or the dried fruit aromas associated with older red wines.

3. Taste

Here there are two things we need to pay attention to; flavor and structure. Flavor is classic elements like cherry, lime or blackcurrant. Structure is the wine's level of sweetness, body/fullness, alcohol, tannin and acidity.

The taste experience is also fleeting and changes over time, with the wine tasting differently depending on whether we are at the beginning, middle or end.

How is the taste of wine assessed?

With good training, it is possible to identify a wine's style, origin and even the vintage! Here are some tips on what to look for:

Sweetness:
The best way to taste the sweetness of a wine is with the front of your tongue, right when you put the wine in your mouth. Residual sugar is the natural amount of sugar in the wine after fermentation. Dry wines have less residual sugar and will taste more acidic.

Acid:
Acidity is an important part of a wine's character; the more acid, the lighter the body/fullness of the wine. Acidity can help us track whether the wine comes from a warm or cold climate, how old the wine is, and how long it can be stored.

Acidity is the pH value of the wine, which determines how sharp, or sour, a wine tastes. In wine, the pH value is between 2.6 and 4.9 - the lower the number, the more acidic the wine. Thus, a wine with a pH of 2.6 is very acidic, while one with a pH of 4.9 is almost flat in comparison.

A few rules of thumb regarding acidity:

• Most wines are between 3 and 4 pH
• High acidity may mean that the wine comes from a cool climate or the grapes were harvested early.
• Wines with high acidity are sharper and lighter in taste.
• Low acidity tends to produce a softer wine with more body.

Tannin

Tannin is a classic red wine characteristic and can tell you about the grape variety, whether the wine is aged in oak and how long the wine can be aged.

The tannins come from the grape skins and stones, or from aging in oak barrels.

• Oak tannins will often have a soft, round taste. Typically, you will experience this taste in the middle of the tongue.
• Grape tannins are often 'greener' in taste, with a more raspy sensation on the tongue.

Most wines have either pure grape tannins or a mixture of both oak and grape tannins. It's really hard to tell the difference between the two types, but don't let that stop you from enjoying the wine.

Alcohol
Alcohol can sometimes tell us the intensity of the wine and how ripe the grapes in it have been.

• The alcohol percentage can give the wine both body and texture.
• The alcohol percentage in table wine is between 5% and 16%, fortified wine (port wine, sherry, etc.) is between 17 - 21%
• The amount of alcohol is related to how sweet the grapes are before fermentation.
• Warm climates produce sweeter grapes, which can help give the wine a higher alcohol percentage.
• There are wines with a low alcohol percentage and wines with a high alcohol percentage, but you cannot use the alcohol percentage as a parameter for whether the wine is good - both types can be good in their own fields.

Fill

The fullness or body of the wine can also tell us about the type of wine, the region it comes from and whether it has been barrel-aged.

The body of the wine culminates in all of the aforementioned characteristics of the wine. You can categorize wines based on their body to help you discover what you like. For example, Syrah tastes very full at the beginning and typically has a very subtle finish, while Nebbiolo starts out light and airy and develops more intense tannins as the flavor develops in the mouth.

4. Conclusion

Finally, we try to form an overall overview of the wine; what was the overall characteristic? Was the wine balanced? And so on.

Finally, take notes while you taste, this will help you evaluate the wine, but is also a good reference for later tastings.

So what now?

Where do you start when you want to learn more about wine and its different characteristics? The possibilities are endless, but here we have collected a few wines that are fun to taste against each other:

• Pinot Noir, the "old" world against the "new": Lupe-Cholet Coteaux Bourguignons against Montes Alpha Pinot Noir
• Chardonnay vs. Gewurtztraminer, two very different white wines; try Columbia Crest Chardonnay and Two Wines Gewurtztraminer
• Barrel vs. steel tank, a classic duel; try Celler Piñol Raig de Raïm vs. Paul Jaboulet Aîné Parallele 45

This was our little guide to wine tasting. It is not complete, but we hope it can be used as inspiration for your wine experiences. As always, there will be exceptions that stand out from our general considerations of the characteristics of the wines.

Enjoy your own wine tasting.

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