Wine Not

How to taste Wine?
Contact us for more information. We can also organize a wine tasting initiation.

The best way to truly enhance your understanding of wine is to taste as many wines as possible. Understanding the basics of wine types, selections, storage and tasting add new dimensions to your wine experience. This is a perfect introduction in choosing the right wine to suit your taste. Each wine has a different personality that changes according to the variety of the grape, its age, the harvesting, the soil it grew from and the weather it was exposed to.

Wine Tasting will help you identify these elements. The process can be broken down into five basics steps: Color, Swirl, Taste, Smell and Aromas.

Color
The best way to get an idea of a wine's color is to get a white background and hold the glass at an angle in front of it. The range of colors that you may see depends, of course, on whether you taste a white or a red wine.
The white wine can be: pale yellow-green, straw yellow, gold, yellow-brown or brown.
The red wine can be: Purple, ruby, red, red brown or brown.

Swirl
Why do we swirl wine? To allow oxygen to get into the wine: Swirling aerates the wine and releases more of the bouquet and aromas.

Smell
This is the most important part of wine tasting. You can perceive just four tastes, sweet, sour, bitter and salt but the average person can identify more than two thousand different scents and wine has two hundred of its own. After you have swirled the wine, it releases the bouquet and you should smell the wine at least three times to get the best information.

Taste
Tasting is something you do with your taste buds. There are many in our mouth - on both sides of the tongue, underneath, on the tip, and extending to the back of the throat. If you take a gulp of wine, you bypass all of those important taste buds. When you taste wine, you should leave it in your mouth between three and five seconds to appreciate the flavors before swallowing.

Aromas
The aromas will change according to the variety of the grape, the weather, the soil, the harvesting and the fermentation process (oak or metal barrels). There is a large palette of aromas that can be identified as you taste a wine and that will define its character:

Cabernet: black current, cherry, black fruit and green spices

Merlot: plum, red and black fruits, green spices and floral

Zinfandel: black fruits and black spices

Syrah: black fruits and black spices – especially black & white pepper

Pinot Noir: red fruits, floral and herbs

Chardonnay- cool climate: tropical fruits, citrus fruit in slightly warmer climes and melon in warm regions. With increasing proportion of malolactic fermentation, Chardonnay loses green apple and takes on creamy notes such as apple, pear, peach and apricot.

Sauvignon blanc : Grapefruit, white gooseberry, lime and melon

Please feel free to call us for any further questions you may have.
We are always happy to help enhance a strong wine experience!