The art of tasting a red wine

Talking about wines, Red Wines are the most popular of all around the world. From vine to wine, it goes through long procedures to achieve that particular luxurious taste. The winemakers have been practicing and experimenting with the techniques to create their masterpieces. Tasting a red varietal in itself is like an art. Here are a few tips on how to taste a wine.

The label:
Even if you are not a wine expert, you can know a lot about the wine from its label. A few things which you can notice on the label are
The vintage- it tells you when the wine has been harvested.
Its origin- whether it comes from a colder or warmer region affects the taste of the wine.

Pour and tilt the glass:

Tilt your glass and notice the colour of the wine over a white background. The colour of the wine tells us about its age. A wine with more vibrant or intense colours is younger and as the wine ages it tends to lose its colour.

Sense the aromas:

Take a sniff of your wine. But before doing so, swirl the wine once. It would help the aromas of the wine to rise. Now bring your nose closer to the glass and smell the aromas. The aromas tell a lot about the flavours you can expect from that wine. You may feel fruity aromas or floral aromas. Maybe aromas of leather, spice or earth as well.

Taste the wine:

Finally, it’s time to time to taste the wine. But do not swallow it altogether. The wine consists of various flavours. It might be sweet, acidic, sour or dry. Allow the wine to stay in your mouth for a while so that you are able to enjoy all the flavours.

Finale:

Here comes the conclusion where you can talk about the texture, taste and your overall experience with the wine. The above wine tasting process can be followed for different wine varietals like the reds progressing towards whites, sparkling, and fortified's. Experimenting with different wines will make you smarter wine taster over time. It will help you to discover the subtle aromas and flavours present in wines.

Why Wine Tasters Hold the Key to Wine Sale-Purchase?

For those who do not know much about wines or the wine industry, it might seem difficult to gauge the importance of role of wine tasters. With hundreds of thousands of wines from different brands and geographical regions and with many different blends also possible to make, it is not possible for wine consumers to know which one is better than the other. Wine lovers would often like to compare and judge the wines before buying wines. So, they need to find the reviews and the tasting notes of the wines from experts they trust. These experts are the wine tasters who, by virtue of their sensory perception and experience, are able to provide valuable information about the wine.

Popular wine tasters command a good following and their followers trust every single bit of word they write or say about a wine. Being professionals, they are in a position to determine the style and nature of a wine and compare it with the others. For this reason, all wineries do call these experts to tell them about the quality and nature. They can rate the wines on the basis of its different qualities in terms of points in order to signify their relative characteristics. The more are the points of a wine, the better it is. The first tasting notes prepared by them after tasting the wine are the fine prints which provide valuable information about its nature and characteristics. These notes and reviews are very useful in present day where wines are bought and sold online.

Wine tasting became a more organized and professional skill from the 14^th century onwards. It evolved slowly as the aromas, flavours and colours of wines began to be given different terminologies and these began to be accepted on a wide scale. It has now evolved into a full-fledged professional career path for wine lovers. (Details about winetasting can be further read here.)