Wine. All the Time.

PRIMARY

FLORAL

FREESIA

GARDENIA

HONEYSUCKLE

IRIS

JASMINE

LAVENDER

PEONY

ROSE

VIOLET

CITRUS

GRAPEFRUIT

LEMON

LIME

ORANGE

TANGERINE

TREE FRUIT

APPLE

APRICOT

NECTARINE

PEACH

PEAR

TROPICAL FRUIT

BUBBLEGUM

GUAVA

KIWI

LYCHEE

MANGO

PINEAPPLE

RED FRUIT

CHERRY

CRANBERRY

POMEGRANATE

RASPBERRY

RED CURRANT

STRAWBERRY

BLACK FRUIT

BLACKBERRY

BLACK CHERRY

BLACK CURRANT

BLUEBERRY

BOYSENBERRY

PLUM

DRIED FRUIT

DATE

FIG

RAISIN

SPICE

ALLSPICE

ANISE

BLACK PEPPER

CINNAMON

WHITE PEPPER

GREEN

ALMOND

BELL PEPPER

EUCALYPTUS

GOOSEBERRY

GRASS

JALAPEÑO

MINT

TARRAGON

TOMATO

TOMATO LEAF

THYME

EARTH

BEETS

CLAY

DUST

PETROLEUM

SLATE

VOLCANIC ROCKS

WET ROCKS

SECONDARY

MICROBIAL

BEER

BUTTER

CREAM

MUSHROOM

SOURDOUGH

TRUFFLE

TERTIARY

OAK AGING

CIGAR BOX

COCONUT

SMOKE

VANILLA

GENERAL AGING

COCOA

COFFEE

DRIED FRUIT

LEATHER

NUTS

TOBACCO

FAULTS

TCA (CORKED)

CARDBOARD

OLD NEWSPAPERS

WET DOG

SULFIDES

BOILED EGGS

BURNT MATCHES

BURNT RUBBER

CAT PEE

BRETTANOMYCES

BARNYARD

HAMSTER CAGE

MANURE

COOKED

OLD SHERRY

STEWED FRUIT

VOLATILE ACIDITY

BALSAMIC VINEGAR

NAIL POLISH REMOVER

TASTING

FINALLY. THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! PUTTING WINE IN YOUR MOUTH! But don’t get too excited. Yes, soon I will set you heathens free to pour as much juice down your hatches as you damn well please. But the tasting portion of wine tasting isn’t just to drink wine—it’s how to evaluate the different sensations, textures, and flavors you experience while drinking wine.

As I mentioned earlier, your tongue can only taste sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami. If this brings back memories of elementary school science diagrams of tongues with designated areas for each taste, you can go ahead and forget it. The tongue diagram was first introduced in 1901 by a German scientist, Dieter P. Hanig. Although he was correct that the tongue does detect these different flavors, and with more sensitivity and taste buds around its edges, he was wrong in his artistic interpretation of his findings. There isn’t one spot for sweet or sour or the others; you can feel these sensations all over your tongue.

That’s why when describing wine, you hear people talk about their front, mid, and back palate. Imagine your tongue divided into thirds, horizontally. A good wine will have different sensations across your entire tongue. By dividing the tongue into these palates, it makes it easier to identify the various sensations and textures, and you get to say things like “This is soft and light on the front” or “Jesus Christ, this has a whiskey back!”

When tasting wine, you want to take a nice-size sip, but not a gulp. It’s a sip, and not one of those “sips” your dude takes and then half of the soda is gone. You want enough to taste it, but not so much that you can’t move it around in your mouth. Personally, I’m from the tasting school of Three Sips. I feel like that’s enough sips to give a wine a chance and to evaluate the qualities and characteristics of the wine’s taste.

Take a sip, think on it. Just get the general vibe of the wine. No pressure.

Take another sip, and maybe incorporate that weird slurping thing called trilling. Trilling is where you bring air into your mouth while the wine is still in there. This aerates the wine in your mouth, releasing more of the aromas, which helps define flavors. You totally don’t have to do this, though, and I wouldn’t recommend doing it at dinner or anything unless you want to look like an asshole. I only do it if I’m at a serious tasting or if I really care about the wine. But I feel that one day you’re going to be tasting serious wine you care about, too, so it’s good to know about this technique.

Take a third sip and chew it. Yep, I said chew your wine. Trust me—it’s such an easy way to enhance your wine tasting. By chewing, it pushes the wine throughout the entirety of your mouth, hitting more taste buds and subsequently heightening many of the wine’s taste qualities. Be warned: This can get intense. Something you thought was maybe a little bitter can quickly become a sweater made of spikes in your mouth. But the good news is it leaves you without a doubt as to the flavor and sensation, and perhaps introduces you to some element of the wine you may have overlooked completely.

These sips aren’t for casually mulling over your opinion of the wine—you’ve got a whole bottle to do that. These sips are focused, as are you, to identify specific characteristics of the wine, such as sweetness, acidity, tannin, body, and texture.

Sweetness

If a wine is sweet, it’s generally a white wine or a red dessert wine, and it will hit you like someone just sprayed Victoria’s Secret Love Spell. Whether it’s faint and far away or thicker than a perfume cloud after PE, it is unavoidable and undeniable. You know that shit. Same with a wine’s sweetness. Sweetness in wine is caused by natural residual sugars from the grapes after fermentation (or adding sugar, a frowned-upon practice called chaptalization), and it will be one of the first things you notice about a wine. Quick myth busting: Sweet is not the same as fruity. Many people will say a ripe, fruit-forward red is “sweet,” but it’s just fruity. The best way to figure out if a wine is actually sweet or the fruit is throwing you off is to plug your nose and taste it. Fruity qualities come from the wine’s aroma, whereas sweetness is a sensation on your tongue. If it still tastes sweet with your nose plugged, then you know it’s actually sweet.

Acidity

Acidity in a wine is how sour it tastes, and it’s this sensation that can leave your mouth watering. Think of the acidity scale like a candy aisle, with everything ranging from Warheads to Swedish Fish. A high-acidity wine is going to be tart and more like Sour Punch Straws, whereas a low-acidity wine is going to be creamier, like those smoothie-inspired Skittles.

Body

There’s no doubt you’ve heard people talking about a wine being this-bodied or that-bodied. What they’re talking about is the feeling of a wine’s “weight” in your mouth. A light-bodied wine is going to feel thin, clean, or delicate, and go down like water. A full-bodied wine is going to feel heavy, dense, or powerful—kind of like trying to swallow a thick perfume. A medium-bodied wine is somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum, with light- to medium-bodied and medium- to full-bodied wines. Unlike wrestling, there are no specific regulations that define a wine’s weight class. You just have to let it step onto the scale of your tongue and measure for yourself.

Texture

Also known as the delightfully gross-sounding mouthfeel, the texture of a wine is how it physically feels in your mouth. Some common descriptors are things like smooth, gritty, velvety, rich, or juicy. The texture of a wine is one of my favorite parts about a tasting because you can be as simple as saying something is “fuzzy” or go as far as “it’s like licking the side of my grandmother’s couch.”

Tannins

Tannins are astringent biomolecules found in many plants, including grape skins, seeds, and stems, and in some wood, such as oak. That feeling like you just ate a whole box of dryer sheets when you’re drinking a red wine? That comes from tannins, either from the grapes or from barrel aging. Aside from giving wine (and your mouth) a dry and puckering texture, tannins can add bitterness to a wine . . . and to dinner parties where someone will undoubtedly blame them for their “wine headaches.” While tannins can give people headaches, whether it’s as dire as your homie’s dramatic new girlfriend makes it out to be is debatable. Black tea is just as strong in tannins, so if you can sip a cup of that without a problem, your headache might be due to the fact that you’re drinking too much red wine.

Finish

The finish is the flavor and sensation a wine leaves in your mouth after you’ve swallowed. [Insert innuendo of choice.] They’re usually talked about in terms of length, like a short, crisp finish or a long, dry finish. When you take all the qualities of a wine’s taste into consideration, you can also talk about things like complexity and balance. The complexity refers to how dimensional a wine is. The more layers of flavors and textures, the more complex the wine. The balance of a wine is how well all those different flavors and textures work together. A balanced wine is seamless, with everything just in its right place.

And then, you’re done! Now you just get to drink and have opinions!

. . . Unless you want to take it to the next level and finish your tasting with the Ross Test. The Ross Test is my highly scientific contribution to the art of wine tasting, where you judge a wine based on whether or not you can swig it straight from the bottle. Some wines are great for swigging and others aren’t, and I believe that’s an important thing for a wine drinker to know. We all have times we want to celebrate and we all have bad days, both occasions when you may just not have the time or willpower to find a glass. So take your bottle and throw it back a couple sips. If it’s delicious, it passes. If it sucks, it fails. Please be advised that most tasting rooms do not include/encourage/allow this very important technique in their tastings, even when you are Marissa A. Ross, creator of the Ross Test.

I know what you’re thinking: “Damn, that’s a lot to do while drinking.” I promise it only looks that way on paper. In reality, it’s simply paying attention to your senses, even though it doesn’t always feel so simple to do. There are plenty of times when I still can’t quite put my finger on what I’m smelling or tasting. But you take another sip, stay present in your senses, and do your best to pick out the different things you’re tasting. You still may not know what the hell it is, but you’ll be that much better for your next glass. And the next glass after that. And the next glass after that.

Because practice makes perfect. And wine-tasting practice is the best practice since it’s just drinking wine. You’re probably practicing right now! And I have to say, I love your initiative. Keep up the good work, champ.

To-Drink List:

Obtain a bottle of your choice.
Pour yourself a glass and give yourself ten minutes with each step of wine tasting, giving the appearance a good up-down, swirling, smelling, and three (or more) sips.
Talk out loud about what you’re seeing/smelling/tasting. This may feel silly if you’re alone, but along with practicing these steps, you want to practice articulating what you’re sensing in each step. This will help you feel more confident talking about tasting in groups.
Take notes. Writing down what you’re experiencing will help imprint the method, as well as help you keep track of similarities and differences between wines you’re tasting. These come in handy in conversation, as well as for contrasting and comparing wines in the future. For example, if you almost always taste tobacco in Nebbiolo, you can use that as a barometer for tasting other Nebbiolos, and use that as a talking point.
Remember, this isn’t math. Don’t worry about what you think you should be tasting, and let yourself see, smell, and taste whatever it is you’re seeing and smelling and tasting. Have fun with it!
Oh, and Ross Test that shit!