As a wine Tasting

In the tasting of wine (or wine tasting) is used not only to taste palate, but the smell and sight. Hence the ideal place for tasting should be well lit, airy, quiet, devoid of smell and average temperature. The glasses to be used by the tasters must be transparent and colorless, to appreciate the color and brightness.

In the tasting, the tasters carefully tested different types of wines to appreciate its qualities, write their impressions and assign score. There are also tours or tastings for customers who do not necessarily score the wines, but just enjoy it. Tasting should be differentiated professional and amateur consumer.

 

Tasting Cup

The cup is called the internationally recommended Afnor cup corresponding to ISO 3591-1977. It has the following features:

• Height: 155 mm
• Diameter of the widest part: 65 mm
• Rim diameter: 46 mm
• Foot thickness: 9 mm
• Base diameter: 65 mm

However, he starts to be replaced by the so-called glass Œnologues, a glass ball type wide mouth that allows you to enter both the mouth and nose. Although it is made of thinner glass has more weight, which allied with a foot longer provides the necessary movements to sniff the wine.

Basic Considerations

In a tasting of wine, must take into account the following basic considerations:

• The order is in the tasting: sight, smell and taste. Also involved the sense of touch, because the language has this sense and we can provide information on density, temperature, or turbidity carbon gases.
• The wine should be served at the proper temperature. Currently recommended to serve young white wines and champagne from 6 to 9 ° C, white wines with oak and rose between 10 and 13 ° C, young reds between 14 and 16 ° C, the reds with aging or reservations between 16 and 18 º C and sweet wines between 7 and 10 ° C.
• We start with the visual phase, taking the cup from the base to avoid heating the container where the liquid and see through it to see the wine to the light or against a white background, appreciating its color, brightness and cleanliness.

• In the olfactory phase, first about the cup without stirring to the nose to inhale the aromas "primary" from the grape variety, the cup moves around its vertical axis, so that the wine up the walls and and appreciate "tears" or "legs" that leaves the wine in the glass (which denotes the degree of alcohol content) and flavors "secondary" fermented. You can shake the cup again to release more aromas and so perceive the "tertiary", if any, that come from the aging of wine, be it in barrels, in bottles or both.is said that a wine has "bouquet" if aromas "tertiary"
• Finally, the Palate, is tested with a small sip wine, moving from one place to another in the mouth with the tongue to appreciate the four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. A wine "round" is one that strikes a balance between the four basic tastes. It is also often bring in air through your mouth while we still have the sip it from the nose in order to appreciate more intense aromas via retronasal.
• Once tasted the wine in the mouth can be swallowed or spit. Normally spitting is usually not the alcohol into the blood and the taster acquire a degree of intoxication. Do not lose any feeling for spitting the wine.
• We say that a wine is if your feeling low persistence in the mouth after you swallowed or spit takes no more than 3 seconds. It has medium persistence if this feeling lasts between 3 and 6 seconds, and has high persistence if your feeling lasts longer than 6 seconds.
• Describe the feelings requires instruction. It is usual to compare the aromas of the wine with flavors and aromas are known as fruits (lemon, pineapple, banana, apple, blackberry, peach, cherries, raspberries, etc ...), flowers, wood ash, coffee, butter, cocoa, leather, pepper, Chinese ink, wet ground, among others.

Description of the different parameters

Visually differentiate various shades, which are clearer in younger wines and darker in aged wines. The shades with advancing age of the wine are:

Shades of wines according to their age

Type of wine	Young wines	Wines aged
White	Straw yellow or greenish	Golden
Rose	Pale pink or strawberry	Salmon
Red	Ruby or cherry	Garnet or tile

With the smell can appreciate the aroma of wine. Young wines are fruity or floral aromas, while the aged wines can have aromas of spice, like cinnamon or cloves, balsamic aromas like mint or pine, or wood aromas.

Finally, we savored the flavors, which are cataloged with terms like fruity, velvety, warm, astringent, light bodied, fresh, persistent, short and dry.

Tasting Types

• The vertical tasting is a test session where the same wine-say-same label of the winery, but of different vintages or vintages. That is, in a session you can try the same wine in their harvests 1999, 2000 and 2001. "

• If the wines tasted are different but the same vintage and of the same denomination of origin, we would have a horizontal tasting. In this way we compare the various elaborations of the wines tasted and quality of the grapes used. "

• The test involves blind tasting wines which have no information of their origin, and try to describe or rate without any suggestion as it is not the bottle or the label.also sometimes try to guess your brand, producer, vintage year or grape variety used, although this is not the most usual.