How to Taste and Buy Wine

"Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used."
-William Shakespeare, Othello, II. iii. (315)

How to Taste Wine: A Beginner's Guide

Of all the world's beverages, few carry the historical, symbolic, or sensual qualities of wine. Wise is produced around the globe in a dizzying variety of styles, using hundreds of grapes, and with vastly differing quality.

To the uninitiated, the world of wine can seem complicated, snobbish, and elite. Winemakers and connoisseurs often use a variety of technical terms to describe wine's flavors, the land the grapes were grown on, and the processes used to make the wine. To most people not involved in the wine/food industry, much of this information is unimportant. However, there are some simple tips that you can use to enhance your enjoyment and experience of wine without having to become an expert. I will start by discussing the best way of tasting wine, and end with notes about wine buying.

Tasting Wine

Tasting wine is a slow and experiential process that uses all of the senses. Appreciating a wine's merits (or demerits) is a task that cannot be completed in a matter of seconds, or in a single sip. Wine is something that can best be called a "slow food," or a food that takes time and patience to prepare and enjoy. In our fast-paced and hectic lifestyles, it is very easy to forget to slow down sometimes and enjoy some of nature's finer creations. Wine is certainly one of these. Before you begin to taste, try to clear your head and slow down. This will make a big difference to your tasting experience.

Keep an open mind to new flavors. After watching people do tastings of various wines, I have noticed a tendency of people to shut out or disregard wines that do not fit a flavor profile that they are familiar with. Part of tasting wine is an aspect of adventure. You need to be willing to taste things your palette may not be used to, but which can turn out to be fabulous sensory experiences. More often than not, a style of wine can grow on you if you take a little time to get used to it. This is not to say that there are some wines you simply will not like. There are some wines that I prefer not to buy because they do not captivate me the way some other wines do, however these conclusions came from tasting wines in a measured and open minded way.

Wine is made from fruit and therefore has distinct fruit flavors. If you want to get better at identifying flavors in wine, then look up the predominant flavors of the varietals you like, and go eat that fruit. Your palette will get used to the flavors of the fruits you are eating, and you will get better at identifying them in wine. This practice will help you in describing your favorite wine, and you will be able to tell other people the kinds of flavors you like best (helpful in wine shops!).

Now, without further ado, let us go through the steps that you should take when tasting a wine for the first time.

The Steps For Tasting

1. Put the wine in a wine glass, and fill it approximately ¼ full.

A wine glass will help the wine develop its flavors and aromas better than other glasses because of the wide bowl, which offers an area for the wine to oxidize (contact with oxygen can help a wine fresh out of the bottle release flavor), while at the same time holding the aromas in for you to enjoy. If you fill the glass too full, there won't be enough room for the wine to breathe or for the aromas to develop. Smell is a very large part of taste, so you want those smells to develop in the glass. A wine glass also allows you to grip the stem and not the bowl. This means that when you hold the glass the wine will not be warmed by your hands. You want the wine to remain at a constant temperature. White wine should be refrigerated before drinking, and red wine should remain at room temperature.

2. Swirl the wine in the glass.

Swirling the wine will excite the volatile molecules in the wine, making it easier to smell. Simply put your glass on a smooth surface and move the bottom of the glass in small tight circles to achieve a good swirl. A few times should be enough.

3. Put your nose in the glass, and smell the aromas.

Don't be shy, stick your nose right in there! Depending on the wine, you may smell a variety of things. Give yourself a second to describe a few of the things you smell. You can use any terms you want, as there are no wrong answers. Many people who taste wine describe its smells with some fairly bizarre terms, for example: cat pee, tar, ash, asphalt, gravel, and etc. All of these are desirable for one wine or another (yes, even cat pee!). What is important is that you are preparing yourself for what you are about to taste in the glass.

4. Smell once more, and then sip.

After reflecting on your smells the first time around, smell once more and then sip from the glass. Now, here's the good part. Fill about ½ of your mouth with wine, and then suck in a bit of air with it. You should achieve a slurping sound this way. The purpose of this is to warm and oxidize the wine at the same time, releasing as many flavors as possible as you hold the wine in your mouth. Let the wine wash over your tongue a few times, tasting all of the various flavors, and feeling the texture. How does the wine feel in your mouth? What are the predominant flavors? Take some time to reflect on what you have tasted, and perhaps even write down a few notes.

5. Taste again.

Make sure that you taste the wine again several times in the same fashion. This isn't just fun, it is crucial to exploring the various flavors the wine has to offer. You may only need to taste a run-of-the-mill wine a few times to get the gist of its flavors, but truly complex wines will give you something different each time you taste them.

Buying Wine

Now that you have a handle on tasting wine, you probably want to know a little bit about buying it. Nobody wants to buy an overpriced wine that doesn't deliver. The goal here is to get the best wine possible at the lowest price possible. Thankfully, the wine market has opened up considerably over the past decade or two, and there is lots of good quality wine available at the right price. Even so, a little information goes a long way.

1. Find a good wine store.

The best thing to do is to find a good wine store that has knowledgeable individuals working there. Smaller wine stores may not have the biggest selection, but you almost always get more personalized service. Having someone to talk to about wine can be an invaluable service, especially when they may know the next great wine you should try.

2. Read about wine.

You don't have to obey every trend or read every periodical about wine, but you can learn a lot from a little research. Almost all wine magazines give detailed lists of well-valued wines, and often with helpful ratings. Don't be tied to the ratings or to the specific brands listed in the magazine. However, if in reading you find some wines from the Northern Rhone show promise for your tastes, then maybe you should grab a wine from that region with the help of your new friend at the wine store (see above).

3. Don't buy wine at the restaurant.

With your newfound knowledge and your friend at the wine store, you are finally paying less for better wine. Now, don't pay too much for a sub-par wine at the restaurant! Restaurants place (very) high mark-ups on their wines, and there is rarely any need to buy them. Most restaurants have a nominal fee (or "corking" fee) for bringing in an outside bottle of wine to have with your meal. This is an accepted practice at all good restaurants, and there should not be any fuss. Make sure you know what the corking fee is before you head off on your date though, because they do vary considerably!

4. Branch out and try something new.

The more types of wine you try, the broader your search for good deals can range. If the Bordeaux is too expensive right now, then why not have a nice Spanish red? If you don't spend too much, then you can't feel too bad about it if it isn't your cup of tea.

5. Taste. Taste. Taste.

Your local wine store probably has wine tastings on certain days of the week. Go to these tastings, and find out about other ones around your area. There may even be vineyards and wineries you can visit close by. These tastings will make your palette more sophisticated, and will usually cost little to nothing. You will probably also find more quality wines at good prices, and you will know firsthand whether or not you like them.

6. Learn to read a wine label.

I'm not going to get into specifics here, but any wine guide worth its salt will give you an idea what all that stuff on the label means. If you want to know for sure what's in your bottle, learn to read the labels of the wine you are drinking.

7. Enjoy yourself!

This is wine after all, so have fun with it. Don't let people make you feel inferior because you aren't an expert, or because you prefer a certain type of wine. Those people are missing the point of wine. What is important is that you like the wine you drink, and that you keep an open mind. Wine is a hedonistic and beautiful pleasure that makes life a little easier to live, not a college lecture on physics.

I hope I have helped give you a new understanding of wine, and the inspiration to drink a lot more of it for less money. The world of wine may be complicated, but enjoying it doesn't have to be!