Professional sampling of various wines is an art that requires certain skills and knowledge of the taster. It's not enough just to taste the wine - you need to know how to do it right in order to get the most authentic and objective taste experience from the tasting. This tasting consists of several stages and requires certain conditions that affect the final result of the samples.
Instructions
Step 1
The room in which the wine is tested must be quiet and clean, it must have natural light and room temperature. Even the shape of the glass is important for proper tasting - prepare a tulip-shaped glass containing 210-225 ml of liquid.
Step 2
The glass should have a stem, and the sides should be thin, polished and tapering upwards. The diameter of the glass should be smaller at the edges than at the bottom. Wash and dry glasses thoroughly before tasting. Fill the glasses with wine no more than one third and hold the glass by the stem when sampling.
Step 3
Start tasting with light and young wines, gradually moving towards richer and more mature ones. Taste sparkling wines first, then light white and rosé wines, then aged dry white wines, young red, long-aged dry white wines, then aged red wines, and finally finish the tasting with samples of sweet and fortified wines.
Step 4
The first step in tasting should be visual - look at the wine in the glass by dropping it. The surface of the wine must be shiny and free of foreign particles. Then view the glass from the side, holding it up against a white background, at eye level.
Step 5
Determine how intense the color of the wine is, how transparent it is, whether there is any suspension or sediment in it. White wine should not have a gray or brownish rim; it should be golden or amber in color if aged. The white-green color of the wine indicates its youth.
Step 6
Young red wines have dark ruby, pomegranate or scarlet-purple hues. The more mature the red wine you taste, the more brown and orange in it. The wine should not be cloudy and should not have sediment.
Step 7
Always pour champagne for tasting into a dry glass and watch the quality of the bubbles - they should be small and uniform and disappear after a few seconds.
Step 8
After the foam has settled, chains of bubbles should rise from the bottom of the glass. Wait half a minute until the wine "gets used" to the room temperature of the glass - only after half a minute begin to evaluate its external state.
Step 9
After a visual assessment of the wine, conduct an olfactory assessment and finally move on to the main stage, tasting the wine.
