Tastings

This is what I told my students at structured tasting.DO NOT brush your teeth in the hour prior.NO perfume. No cologne.Smell your hands. If you can smell the soap, go and wash them with plain water until you can’t.Ideally you can’t smell your shampoo but if you can, pin your hair back.Observe the wine in the glass.Look at the edges where the wine meets the glass. Does the colour change?Hold it up to sunlight and look through it. Any particulate? How dense is it?Gently swirl the wine in the bowl. You can do this with the stem on the table moving the glass in a small circle.Sniff the bowl, exhaling through your mouth. Inhale through your mouth and exhale through your nose.Close your eyes open your mouth and pause, and think about what you smell.Identify any and all odours if possible.Now take a tiny sip and swish it thoroughly around your mouth. It doesn’t hurt to gargle it a little and pull some air in through your lips, (you may want to practice this last one at home before trying it in public.)Did the gums and/or roof of mouth dry out?Close your eyes and think about what you taste.What areas of the tongue have sensation? Front? Back? Sides?What about the texture? Thick or thin?At this point I usually spit, into a spittoon (typically a 500 ml plastic yoghurt container.) But most of my students will swallow because they came to drink the wines I am showing.Ideally try to construct a 3 dimensional cube in front of yourself and assign flavours to different places. It makes it much easier to remember what wine your drinking if you can say “it’s right there.” pointing to a particular point in the cube for a particular conjunction of flavours.All of this you can do at home by yourself. I did, making notes for 18+ years.In general at home I am drinking for enjoyment, so I go through the above in a much less structured fashion. (And I too swallow.)In a restaurant or in company where people are sometimes put off by such an elaborate ritual, I limit myself to some swirling sniffing and sipping.