Tasting & Appreciating Wine Flashcards
Learn how to properly smell, taste, admire, evaluate, and appreciate the wine you drink. Have fun with friends or simply enjoy the subtle education you receive every time you try a new wine.
What three factors will you be appreciating or evaluating when you taste wine?
- Appearance
- Nose
- Palate
- The appearance is further broken down into color and color intensity
- The “nose” of a wine is the bouquet of aromas you can detect
- The palate refers to the feel of the wine in your mouth, and its flavors
What four things can interfere with a good wine tasting?
Besides that friend who never takes anything seriously?
- Bad lighting
- Strong smells, like perfume, lotion, or even food
- Limited table or counter-top space
- No spittoon
- Bad lighting makes it hard to admire the color of the wine
- Strong smells interfere with your ability to perceive the wine’s aromas
- You need space for glasses, water, and note-taking (otherwise you may forget what you learn!)
- A spittoon is essential for spitting out the wine, unless it’s your intention to “get merry”
What is the recommended volume of wine to be poured into glasses for tasting purposes?
1.7 fluid oz
50 ml
It might not seem like a lot but, trust me, wine tastings have a habit of escalating! It doesn’t help that you can lose track of how much you’ve had.
Check out our YouTube video ‘Why does wine give me a headache?’
What two qualities are you looking for when evaluating a wine’s appearance?
- Color
- Intensity
The color of a wine goes far beyond it just being red, white, or rosé. For instance, red wines can be ruby, purple, garnet, or tawny; white wines can be lemon, gold, or amber; and rosé wines range from pale peach or salmon to nearly red.
Intensity, on the other hand, refers to the concentration of color in the wine, with some, like Bordeaux, being opaque at the center and a dark garnet at the edges and others, like Beaujolais, being a translucent cherry red.
What is meant by ‘color intensity’?
How saturated or concentrated the color of the wine is.
When talking about color intensity, what’s the difference between “pale” and “deep”?
e.g. the pale straw of a Pinot Grigio versus the deep gold of a wooded C
Pale
- a white wine that has a wide, watery, almost colorless rim
- a red wine that has a light hue and is mostly see-through from rim to core
Deep
- a white wine with color that reaches or almost reaches the rim
- a red wine that has deep, concentrated color and is near-impossible to see through
Think about the pale straw color of a pinot grigio versus the deep gold of a heavily-wooded chardonnay. At the rim, the former looks colorless, like water, while the latter has a rich, golden color that extends from rim to rim.
What 3 colors can you use to describe a white wine?
Actually, you can use any color in your vocabulary to describe a wine if you want, from Barbie pink to diaper brown. The three colors we’re asking about, however, are universally recognized and understood as official wine descriptors and are far less likely to elicit strange looks from people.
- Lemon
- Gold
- Amber
Lemon= water-white to yellow in color
Gold= tinges of orange or brown
Amber= noticeable browning
What 4 colors can you use to describe a red wine?
- Purple
- Ruby
- Garnet
- Tawny
Purple= blue or purple tinted
Ruby = bright red
Garnet= obvious brick/orange or browning, but the wine is still more red than brown
Tawny= more brown than red
What 3 colors can you use to describe rosés?
- Pink
- Pink-orange
- Orange
What does a wine nerd mean when they refer to the primary, secondary, and tertiary aromas of a wine?
Primary aromas arise directly from the grapes themselves
Secondary aromas originate from wine-making processes that occur from or after fermentation
Tertiary aromas arise from the aging process
Examples:
- Primary aromas: apple, citrus, and blossom;
- Secondary aromas: vanilla from oak contact or brioche from yeast;
- Tertiary aromas: caramel, hazelnut, and dried fruits.
What 4 structural components contribute to a wine’s body and “balance”?
- Sugar
- Alcohol
- Acidity
- Tannin
Good wines exhibit a balance between all four of these components so that no particular one stands out and yet all act in a kind of synergy to produce an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.
In what 4 ways can you describe the sweetness (or lack thereof) of a wine?
- Dry: no sugar or no perceptible sugar
- Off-dry: barely-there or a kiss of residual sugar
- Medium: obvious sugar, but not sweet enough to pair with desserts
- Sweet: sugar is the main driver of the wine
Examples:
- Dry: sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon
- Off-dry: some riesling, gewürztraminer, and pinot gris
- Medium: some riesling, gewürztraminer, and muscat
- Sweet: Moscato d’Asti, Port, and Sauternes
How do you perceive the acidity of a wine?
Acidity makes your mouth water
White wines tend to be more acidic than red wines, making your mouth water and pucker similar to the way lemon juice does.
What are two questions to consider when tasting for acidity in wine?
- What is the sugar level in the wine?
- Am I possibly confusing acidity with alcohol?
Sugar level: Sugar counteracts the effects of acidity so even if a wine doesn’t taste sharp, it could still be acidic. Rieslings, for example, are among the most acidic wines, and yet you often can’t perceive that because of their higher sugar content.
Alcohol or acidity: the sharp, tingling, or burning sensation of alcohol can oftentimes be confused with acidity.
What do tannins “taste” like”?
Tannins cause your mouth to dry out and sometimes leave a bitter taste on the back of the palate.
Have you ever accidentally chomped on the stringy bits (phloem bundles) of a banana and it instantly dried your mouth out? That’s because those fibrous strings contain a lot of tannin!
Tannins are produced in nature to make unripe fruits and seeds unpalatable, thus dissuading animals from eating them.
A good wine balances tannins with the other structural components of acid, sugar, and alcohol so the “dry” effect doesn’t stand out but rather contributes beautifully to the body of the wine.
