In contemporary people, the senses have remarkably shrunk and weakened.
Touch, taste, smell, tools of great importance to achieve a non-superficial knowledge of the environment and oneself, have regressed considerably. Time is invariably short, speed is increasing, and this is depriving us of many effective ways to smell and enjoy the world.
Newly training our senses, re-enhancing perception, restoring our sensory skills are some important aspects of our philosophy of life. Wine-tasting as a conscious way to reflect one’s senses is a part of this path. This statement also holds true the other way around: there is no wine-tasting without rediscovering and acquiring suitable sensory skills.
Consumers play a key role in enhancing the quality of production.
Quality is also to be rediscovered, learnt and codified beyond one’s subjective tastes. Some knowledge is required, leading to a rediscovery of the procedures to produce wine, the way it evolves, the systems to store it, the components which make it proper and those which pervert it, the properties – sensitive to perception – which determine its typology. In this way, it is possible to establish healthy habits, getting to know and appreciate what we drink. And if good quality is a right we have as consumers, we should acquire the skills to recognize and demand it.
Approaching wine is also a spiritual thing, a way to interpret life as a whole. Wine is an ingredient which, along with others, characterizes a lifestyle: the lifestyle of those who do not repress pleasure, but look for it, making choices and regulating it with their reason. It is the lifestyle of those who can establish intense relations with things, who understand the importance of a material culture and conviviality. Knowledge of wine, not meant as merely memorizing technical details, is a way to communicate and share common interests.
But this is not all: considering the neo-prohibition and the ghastly neo-puritanism permeating the contemporary society, developing the signs/values which characterize pleasure may be a vital defence.
Those who think that a wine taster’s training is merely recognizing sensations, recording and ordering them, or just memorizing a list of names, are utterly wrong: we do not need throngs of sterile and arrogant technical experts, who merely repeat notions, but wine lovers.
Breaking free from conditioning is the first step to take when approaching wine-tasting.
Our habits make us assess things on a merely exterior basis.
Appearance is often deceitful.
Authority is exercised by those who believe to know over those who do not know and feel inferior. Prejudices and stereotypes.
Fashions.
Diffidence towards new and original things, devotion to the usual tastes.
We constantly rely on our senses, but rarely stop and think about the processes which result in sensations and perception. If we pay more attention, we run a smaller risk of experiencing deceitful perceptions, our analysis of perceptions becomes deeper, satisfaction and pleasure are greater.
Enjoying food or drinks is an extremely complex operation. In order to perceive and identify a taste, you need to breathe in its aroma: what the tongue does not know can be perceived by the nose. The principle that a sense is affected by another sense is called sensory interaction.
Wine-tasting learners need to improve their sensory acuity in order to:
– separate single sensations;
– decompose a complex impression into its simple elements, thus recognizing the nature, order, intensity of the stimuli reaching their mucosae;
– recognize variations in the intensity of a scent, taste or colour.
And since sight, smell and taste intertwine tightly, the learning process should include three phases:
1) a visual phase to assess the appearance of wine;
2) an olfactory phase (direct and in the back of your nose) to discover scents, that is the more or less volatile aromatic components;
3) a tasting phase taking place in the mouth, to assess flavours.
The single dominant perceptions should then be recomposed in order to perform an overall assessment.
– Attention: this depends on a person’s approach and concentration;
– Intensity of the stimuli: it is easier to recognize the characteristics and provide an assessment of wine with a strong scent;
– Intermittence of the stimuli: regardless how strong they are, continuous stimuli run the risk of not being perceived anymore, since addiction takes place. For this reason, when you perceive the aromas of a wine, the initial impact is of paramount importance, then it is advisable to smell it intermittingly, removing the glass from under your nose for a few seconds before smelling it again.
Sensations and perceptions are stored in our memory. In addition to the immediate experience, we more or less instinctively retrieve some sensory remembrances from our archive, which work as reference points. Wine-tasting is a continuous comparison between immediate and past sensations, which provide us with a key to identify the present. It is a matter of training and repeating experiences: in order to taste wine well, you need to have a flexible memory, capable of retrieving the characteristics of the wine in your mouth and recall its remembrance in few seconds.
During a visual examination, besides a first, immediate classification of the wine as white, rosé, red, you take into consideration: clearness, colour, fluidity (or viscosity), tears, effervescence (for naturally fermented or sparkling wines).
A) After filling about one quarter of a glass, you pick it up from the stem with your forefinger and thumb, raise it to the height of your eyes, watch it backlit; this gesture is performed to assess clearness;
B) Then, after focusing on the colour, you slightly tilt the glass against a white sheet or board, watching it from top to bottom. By watching the disc which the wine forms on the surface, you can check if the colour preserves its tone along the edges. Shades of colours are perceived by tilting the glass as far as possible without spilling any wine and watching the area where the wine mass is less thick (rim);
C) Finally, you slowly rotate the wine in your glass, in such a way as to make the walls wet: you see a liquid film which, sliding down along the walls, forms a series of drops at regular intervals. These tears or arcades provide useful information about some wine components;
D) With sparkling or naturally fermented wines, you should focus on the foam and bubbles.
Clearness indicates that the wine is stable and healthy. Turbidity shows improper wine-making or storage techniques, alterations and diseases. Transparency is connected with clearness.
You assess the following aspects of colour: vivacity, intensity, shades (or tones).
Vivacity is brightness, livelihood and freshness of the colour.
Intensity is also easy to recognize: the colour may be clear, pale, light, weak or strong, intense, and even dark, dense, deep.
Max Léglise makes a comparison between the changes of the colour of wine and those of the bud of a red flower (a rose, a peony), ready to blossom. A brighter and more intense red colour appears when the flower is fully blossoming, then it weakens, acquires yellow-ochre reflections, finally turns brownish. The phenolic characteristics are similar in wine. Therefore, the tone of the colour faithfully mirrors its age.
Purple red reminds us of a peony: it is intense, with violet shades. Ruby red is a dark shade of red which reminds us of the gem by the same name, but it is also similar to the bright red colour of a cherry (we also use the expression cherry red). Garnet red, more intense than the previous one, blends with blood red. Orange red reminds us of bricks and may tend towards brown or orange yellow.
The tones of rosé wines range from orange to light red. Pale pink is light, pink is like the petals of a rose; cherry pink reminds us of certain unripe cherries; chiaretto pink is closer to the colour of red wines; “onion peel” is full or orange reflections.
Paper white is almost colourless. When on a light straw-yellow, background grass-like reflections prevail, in this case we call it greenish yellow; a straw colour is called straw-yellow, which may be light or dark. Gold yellow is the very saturated gold colour, full of bright reflections. Amber yellow reminds us of amber or topaz and may tend towards brown for raisin wines or sweet wines.
If you watch wine as you pour it into a glass or as you slowly rotate a glass, you can perceive its fluidity, that is its firmness.
The so-called tears or arcades provide us with some important information about the wine we are going to taste. They are curves, with patterns of various width, which can be seen on the walls of the glass when you rotate it: a transparent and liquid film deposited there and slowly flows downwards, forming tear-like shapes. This phenomenon is tightly connected with the alcohol content by volume. On the walls of the glass, the most volatile substance, that is alcohol, evaporates, thus increasing the density of the remaining liquid, which is greater than the superficial tension, so it moves downwards. The tighter the tears, the more intense evaporation is and the higher the ethyl alcohol content it.
Effervescence, a typical phenomenon for sparkling wines, is due to the presence of carbon dioxide, which creates foam and bubbles as it is released when the wine is poured.
An assessment of the effervescence (pétillement or perlage in French) takes into consideration the following:
– Foam: it must be fine and dry and disappear within few seconds;
– Number of bubbles: there must be many;
– Quality of the bubbles: their diameter must be small (0.1 mm), therefore a small size is equivalent to good perlage;
– Persistence: in a high-quality sparkling wine, bubbles are fed by the “fountain” which pushes them to the surface;
– Collar: the ring of very fine foam which forms around the walls of the glass when the initial foam disappears.
The substances accounting for scents are volatile substances, whose property is to evaporate.
Three groups of scents are normally identified, according to their origin.
– Primary or variety: they are due to the grapes and depend on the vine variety.
– Secondary or fermentation: they appear during the wine-making processes, they are the “wine-like” scents which spread throughout a cellar when wine is made.
– Tertiary or post-fermentation or aging: they form as the wine ages, first in a barrel, then in a bottle.
Scent has a general meaning, namely the scent produced by the wine in the various phases of its evolution.
By aroma we mostly mean the scent of the variety, that is the whole set of scents typical of young wines (primary scent).
The bouquet, typical of aged wines (tertiary scent) is the whole of the scents acquired with aging, it is complex and composed of various notes and shades of scent.
The following aspects are taken into consideration:
– Quality (refinement, frankness, complexity);
– Intensity,
– Persistence,
– The nature of the scent (scent identification).
A) The first “nasal perception” is carried out when both the glass and the wine are not moving: put your nose close to the glass and briefly breathe in two or three times.
B) Then smell the wine after rotating the glass, to release volatile substances better. Start by making some short rotations, smell, then stir more continuously and for a longer time. Put your nose as close to the wine surface as possible, breathe in deeply for three-four seconds and repeat this operation two or three times, with intervals of a few seconds.
By breathing in applying these two methods, you assess the intensity and the quality of wine and a first discrimination of scents is performed: when the glass is still, you distinguish the light, delicate, volatile ones; when it is moving, the deeper ones.
C) The sense of smell is also used when the wine is poured into your mouth (olfactory-tasting phase): now you perceive scents in an indirect or retronasal way. Move the wine in your mouth, letting some air pass through your teeth by breathing in softly a few times: you will perceive the so-called “mouth aromas”.
D) Use your nose again after swallowing the wine: you will feel its aroma in your mouth for a certain period of time: it is the intense aromatic persistence (I.A.P.) or finish, a synthesis of more or less persistent olfactory and taste sensations.
E) Finally, use your nose again on the empty glass: you can still perceive some scents you did not perceive earlier and draw some information about the evolution of the wine.
If you let your glass of wine rest for at least a quarter of an hour, its scents, especially if it is a mature and complex wine, evolve in a surprising way.
The quality of a scent is HIGH if it is:
1. Frank, that is clean, distinct, devoid of foreign, anomalous or defective odours;
2. Fine, that is elegant, distinguished, well-balanced, harmonious, properly composed;
3. Complex, that is rich of shades of odour.
By intensity we mean the strength, the power expressed by the scent (whether it is an aroma, scent or bouquet). An assessment of the intensity is subordinate to an assessment of the quality: a very intense but scarcely harmonious and pleasant scent enhances the negative properties of the wine.
By persistence we refer to a property that makes a scent continuous and long-lasting.
This operation may be extremely complex.
It is based on two general factors:
– Addiction: the sense of smell quickly gets used to a certain scent and progressively become less sensitive to it, thus starting to perceive a less intense one. This makes it possible to discriminate and identify the various scents;
– Degree of volatility of the substances accounting for odours. First you will sense the lightest and most ethereal scents (some flower and aromatic scents), then the averagely volatile ones (fruits and grassy scents), then the strongest ones (certain animal notes, tar, roasting).
In order to identify – and describe – scents, a series of phases should be followed:
1) Detect the dominant tone, that is the clearest and most intense, which prevails from the first impact;
2) Look for the main family this scent belongs to: flowers, fruits, spices, etc.;
3) Look for the closest natural odour within that family;
4) Within the previous series, detect the specific reference fruit.
At this point, we are also able to define the origin of the detected scents: primary, secondary or tertiary.
In order to define odours, the analogy criterion is used, that is a comparison with known odours of flowers, fruits, spices or other food and non-food products.
The odours commonly found in wines are divided into series or families.
Acacia, hawthorn, rose, iris, geranium, honeysuckle, orange flower, vine flower, field flowers, elder tree, lime tree, verbena, violet, hyacinth, narcissus, jasmine, Spanish broom.
Grass, fern, cut hay, limoncella apple, sage, green olives, crumpled leaves, dead leaves, nut husk, green pepper, mushrooms, mint, musk, humus (underwood), tobacco, infusion, tea, truffle.
Smoked, cocoa, coffee, caramel, natural rubber, chocolate, creosote, goudron (tar), roasted almond, toasted bread, flint.
Apricot, pineapple, banana, cherry, quince, raspberry, currant, strawberry, lemon, citron fruits, bitter almond, blackberry, musky, apple, renetta apple, pear, plum, exotic fruits.
Anise, cinnamon, gloves, fennel, liquorice, nutmeg, pepper, laurel, thyme, basil, lavender, ginger, vanilla.
Amber, fur, leather, meat, game, sweat, cat pee, civet, foxy (wild).
Dried fig, almond, nut, hazelnut, dried plum, sultana, jam, stewed fruit.
Noble resins, pine, incense, juniper, turpentine.
Odours due to the wood in which the wine was stored, cigar box.
Flour, bread crust, yeasts, butter, cheese (dairy odour), honey, cider, beer.
Vinegar, sulphur, drugs, disinfectant, celluloid (due to the chemical compounds in wine: alcohol, ethyl acetate, sulphur dioxide).
Nail varnish, English candy, soup, wax, dairy products (due to fermentation, acid esterification, lactic acid bacteria, fermentation alterations).
There are four basic flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter.
In wine, sweet, sour (and, to a lesser extent, bitter and salty) flavours are mixed.
A taster should be able to distinguish them and assess their mutual relationships.
Once again, our physiology can help us: it has been proved that the basic flavours are perceived at different times.
In addition to pure tastes, our mouth also feels tactile sensations.
The following may be due to the wine:
– astringency, caused by tannins, a sensation which makes your mouth furry, causing the contraction of your gums, an impression of dryness and roughness in your tongue, decreased salivation;
– carbon dioxide itch, very evident when we taste sparkling wine: in your mouth, you feel an itch and a sensation of freshness;
– heat, or rather a caustic, corrosion, heat-like sensation, which you feel in the presence of acids, metal salts, bases, alcohol.
In wine, these impressions are caused by alcohol.
Sensations due to the temperature, which modifies and deeply confuses flavours.
Firmness, particularly characterising sweet wines: sensations range from fluid to oily.
A) Put a little amount of wine in your mouth;
B) First, keep the wine in the front of your mouth, then move it with your tongue to put it into contact with the most sensitive parts of your oral cavity. In this way, you will be able to appreciate the softness, acidity and astringency of the wine and their balance;
C) As you keep the wine on your tongue, breathe in some air: in this way, the active principles of the wine will be volatized and your tasting and tactile sensitivity will be enhanced;
D) Expel or swallow the wine;
E) “Chew” rhythmically in order to assess the intense aromatic persistence (I.A.P.).
To sum up, there are three moments in the sequence of tasting sensations:
1) Perceived impact in the first few seconds
2) Evolution of the tasting sensation
3) The impression which persists in the mouth when the wine is expelled.
– The general structure
– The balance or harmony of the various components
– The intensity and quality of the various retronasal sensations (mouth aromas)
-The persistence and pleasantness of final sensations (finish or aftertaste)
– The evolutionary stage of the wine.
When we put some wine in our mouth and mix it with our tongue, we experience an overall impression due to its structure or body. The body is determined by the ethyl alcohol and the whole of non-volatile substances, called extracts. The overall structure is the result of some precise balances.
The general notion of tasting balance
The most evident tasting sensations and which affect the balance most are listed below.
The alcohol content produces a vinosity sensation, a heat sensation and, at the same time, a strength sensation.
The two terms are not synonymous. Sweetness defines wine on the basis of its sugar content; softness (called moelleux in French) is the combination of sweetness (a real tasting sensation) and mellowness (a tactile sensation) which the wine leaves in your mouth.
Also in this case, you need to distinguish between the actually perceived acid flavour and the acid component of the wine, due to the fixed acidity which plays a key role in the flavour balance.
Acidity causes sensations of freshness, liveliness, vigour. If it is excessive, the wine will be aggressive, bitter, and will give an impression of harshness, hardness. If it is too low, the wine will be soft, flat, characterless.
Astringency causes impressions of roughness and dryness in your tongue and gums: very tannic wines seem to be rough, bitter, they make your mouth furry. Since tannins contribute to the body of the wine, if tannicity is low the wine will be empty, shapeless.
“Alcoholicity, softness, acidity, tannicity: given the main components of a wine, the final result is their algebraic sum” – Emile Peynaud.
They are bound by reciprocity relations: masking (one hides the other), strengthening (one enhances the other), antagonism (one weakens or neutralizes the effect of the other).
In white wines, practically devoid of tannins, the balance is due to the contrasting action of softness and acidity: these wines are called “two-dimension wines”.
Some clarifications:
– In dry white wines to be drunk when they are young, the optimal balance is sufficient softness and a slight dominance of acidity, which makes the wine lively and fresh;
– In wines with more complex structures, which improve after a period of aging, balance will be reached if moderate acidity is balanced by a slight predominance of softness, due to a rather high alcohol content;
– in sweet white wines, the balance between alcohol and sugars should be added to that between acidity and softness: the alcohol content should be quite high to antagonize the high percentage of residual sugars;
– for white wines fermented or refined in wooden barrels, you need to take into consideration a slight tannic component, however not comparable to that normally present in red wines.
To determine the balance in red wines, a key role is played by softness, acidity and tannicity: these wines are called “three-dimension wines”.
Some clarifications:
– Since acidity and astringency strengthen each other, a red wine is unbalanced if it has a high degree of both acids and tannins at the same time;
– As regards young red wines, a slightly higher degree of acidity contributes to the overall freshness. Conversely, a high degree of tannins will ensure good softness;
– In aged red wines, an initial predominance of tannicity is normal and necessary to confer longevity; as these wines are refined, they will acquire roundness and softness, while preserving a certain degree of astringency (austerity).
The sense of smell plays a key role to determine tasting sensations. While assessing the quality of a wine, the so-called mouth aroma, that is the whole of the tasting-olfactory sensations perceived in the back of the nose, is of paramount importance.
Once the wine has been expelled, for a few seconds you will keep on perceiving some sensations which are identical or very similar to those experienced when the wine was in your mouth. The whole of these final sensations is called finish or aftertaste. Within this framework, we should assess:
– The duration of the intense aromatic persistence (I.A.P.);
– The quality of the final impression.
The former, due to the retronasal olfactory sensations, is measured, before some new saliva enters the mouth, by means of a series of rhythmic mastication movements.
As regards the final impression, instead, assessments are relative to pleasantness.
We call a wine young if it still needs a further period of refinement; a wine is ready if it can be drunk and appreciated; it is mature if it has reached an optimal evolutionary stage: it is recommendable to drink it.
Amber tones (for white wines) or brick-brown tones (for red wines) and maderized scents indicate that the wine has reached its final stage.
