There are three phases of a wine tasting: the visual, the olfactory and the gustatory. Each one of them serves to perceive a different quality of the wine, which allows us to discover each of the nuances that compose it.
In order for you to be able to do it with our wines, from Winery On Creations we have written this article in which we want to guide you on what and how are the phases of a tasting.
Phases of a wine tasting: Visual phase
Once we have opened the bottle of wine that we want to taste, it is important that we put it in a transparent glass and that we have a white area as a background. Only in this way can we appreciate the shades and nuances that give color to our wine.
To do it properly, we must tilt the glass by moving our wrist slightly.
The colors of the wine are located in three areas: the tip, the edge and the center. We must pay special attention to the color of the wine in each of them.
The color of a wine tells us many things about it, for example, its age.
Wine colors
The colors that we can see in a wine are the following:
Yellow They explain how long the wine has spent in a barrel. Or, in relation to the aforementioned, to know if we are dealing with a young wine or an old one.
This yellow color is due to the presence of tannins in the wine. All wines have them. And, as it ages, it changes its hue from colorless to yellow until it reaches gold. So the more yellow there is, the older the wine will be.
Obviously, it is easier to detect it in white wines than in red wines.
Other colors that we will be able to appreciate in our wine tasting are reds, purples and browns. At this point it will depend on the type of wine that we see one color or another. These colors are due to the skin of the grape. Hence, as time goes by, some are lost and other colors are perceived. And it is that red and purple disappear with the passage of time. Hence, the wine goes from red-violet to red, then orange, and finally brownish.
This chromatic scale is the one that indicates the age of the wine, from the youngest to the oldest. Intense reds for example are what you will find in our DEMUERTE BLACK wine.
In the case of white wines, we will always be talking about yellow ones. Its scale will range from greenish or straw yellow to golden, typical of older wines.
Phases of a wine tasting: Olfactory phase
In the olfactory phase we have to smell the wine. Capture its aromas to evoke memories and sensations. To do it correctly we have to bring the glass to the nose without moving it. In this way we can capture all the aromas of the wine. Once we have done this, we will move the broth slightly inside the glass and prevent it from spilling. With this we will get it to mix well and we will be able to appreciate all its smells, differentiating each one of them.
The aromas that are usually appreciated are the following: fruity, woody, chemical, floral, vegetable or balsamic. Although there are many others. Here they will be decisive: the variety of the grape, the fermentation process, the aging, or the type of barrel, among other aspects.
Phases of a wine tasting: Gustatory phase
In the last part of the tasting we will make use of taste. It will be time to taste the wine.
Appreciating the flavors of wine requires time, hence it is done in different steps. The usual ones are the following:
- What is the first taste we notice when the wine comes into contact with the mouth.
- Be noticing how these initial flavors evolve as long as it is in the mouth.
The four flavors that we will detect in a wine tasting are the following: sweet, salty, acid and bitter.
Remember, also, that the perceptions that a person has when carrying out a tasting do not have to coincide with those of the rest of the group. In fact, the mood, the olfactory experience of each, etc. They are elements that significantly influence the tasting of a wine and that are not always taken into account.
