To many people, tasting wine means taking a sip and swallowing immediately. This isn’t tasting. Tasting is something you do with your taste buds. And remember, you have taste buds all over your mouth. They’re on both sides of the tongue, underneath, on the tip, and they extend to the back of your throat.
What should you think about when tasting wine?
Be aware of the most important sensations of taste and where they occur on your tongue and in your mouth. As I mentioned earlier, you can only perceive four tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salt (but there’s no salt in wine, so we’re down to three). Bitterness in wine is usually created by high alcohol and high tannin. Sweetness only occurs in wines that have some residual sugar left after fermentation. Sour (sometimes called “tart”) indicates the acidity in wine.
- Sweetness – Found on the tip of the tongue. If there is any sweetness in a wine whatsoever, you’ll get it right away.
- Fruit and Varietal Characteristics – Found in the middle of the tongue.
- Acidity – Found at the side of the tongue, the cheek area, and the back of the throat. It’s most commonly present in white wines and some lighter-style red wines.
- Tannin – The sensation of tannin begins in the middle of the tongue. Tannin frequently exists in red wines or wood-aged white wines. When the wines are too young, it dries the palate to excess. If there’s a lot of tannin in the wine, the tannin can actually coat your whole mouth.
- Aftertaste – This is the overall taste and balance of the components of the wine that lingers in the mouth. How long does flavor last? Usually a sign of a high quality wine is a long, pleasing aftertaste. The taste of many of the great wines lasts well over one minute, with all of their components in harmony.
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