How to serve and taste wine
So you’ve been out and bought some great wines, you’ve stored them correctly and now you want to serve and taste them. What do you need to know? Well in this post we’re going to explore serving and tasting tips which will take you from enthusiastic amateur to experienced wine taster in no time!
Choosing your wine glass
Before a bottle even leaves your wine rack, its worth considering what glassware you are going to serve it into. Thinking about the four main groups of wine the choice of glass I recommend is as follows:
Red wine – Best served in a large wine glass. Generally, red wines require a bit more contact with air in order to allow the aromas to develop, a large glass is going to allow this to occur.
White wine (including rose and orange wines) – Normally a medium sized wine glass is ideal for white wines. The shape and size of the glass allow the fruity aromas to be gathered in the glass and directed towards the nose.
Sparkling wine – Traditionally a wine flute was the best vessel for a sparkling wine, as it enhances the appearance of the bubbles, and allows the bubbles to last slight longer than other styles of glasses. However, there is a growing trend towards tulip shaped glasses, which is also fine.
Sweet and fortified wines – These wines are generally going to benefit from a smaller glass, but which is still of sufficient size to allow the liquid to swill inside it.
I strongly recommend whatever size or shape of wine glass you use, you are using one with a stem. This means you can avoid touching the main receptacle of the glass, preventing both changing the temperature of the wine and getting dirt on the glass making it harder to see clearly.
Opening the wine
Clearly, in order for the wine to leave the bottle and find its way into our glass, we’re going to have to remove either the cork or screw on the bottle. The correct procedure for opening a bottle of still wine is:
(1) Remove the top, or whole capsule by cutting it below the lip of the bottle and gently removing.
(2) Wipe the neck with a clean cloth to remove any dust / debris.
(3) Remove the cork as gently as possible, taking care not to split it.
(4) Clean the neck of the bottle, both inside and outside to remove any debris prior to pouring.
(5) Pour the wine.
The process for opening a sparkling wine is a little different. Extra caution to be taken to prevent the pressurised bottle for releasing the cork at pace and causing injury. Having the bottle chilled down to the right temperature will help here.
Once ready the procedure is:
(1) Remove the foil and loosen the wire cage.
(2) From this point onwards, ensure the cork is held securely in place (you can use your thumb to put downward pressure on the cork.
(3) Tilt the bottle to 30°, leaving one hand on the neck and thumb on the cork. Use the other hand to grip the base of the bottle.
(4) Slowly turn the bottle (not the cork) which holding the cork in place. You should feel the cork moving and loosening.
(5) Continue until the cork is loose allowing it to gently slip out of the bottle neck with a quiet ‘phut’ sound, rather than a loud bang! Unless you’re in formula 1 and then loud bangs and explosions of wine are permitted.
If the wine is a quality wine or aged wine, it might be desirable to decant it. There are two benefits of doing this. Firstly, any deposit formed in the bottle is left in the bottle during the decanting process, so does not end up in the wine. Secondly, decanting can allow a desirable oxygen contact to occur if the wine is left to ‘breathe’ prior to drinking.
There are people who think that removing the cork and leaving the bottle to stand allows the wine to breathe. In reality this has a very minimal impact. The difference between this and a decanter is the amount of surface area is much greater in an decanter.
Extra care needs to be taken when decanting a wine no to disturb the wine and allow the sediment to remix with the wine. The bottle should be taken out of the rack horizontally. Decanting probably deserves a post of its own. Suffice it to say that when you pour the wine into the decanter, you do so very gently and observe (using a light source) the sediment to see when it reaches the neck, at which point you stop decanting.
Serving Temperatures
Depending on the type of wine, the serving temperature is going to be a little different. Thinking about the main wine styles:
Sweet wines – 6-8°C (43-45°F) is ideal
Sparking wines – 6 – 10°C (43-50°F) is ideal
Light white wines – 7 – 10°C (45 – 50°F) is ideal
Heavier white wines – 10 – 13°C (50-55°F) is ideal
Light bodied red wines – 13°C (55°F) is ideal
Heavier bodied reds – 15 – 18°C (59 – 64°C) is ideal. It used to be said room temperature, but nowadays we tend to have our rooms much warmer, so just cooler than room temperature is good.
How to taste wine
Now you have the wine the glass, you’re going to potentially want to discover some of the characteristics we’ve discussed earlier in this series. So, firstly, you’re going to need a decent enough amount of wine in the glass. In a pure tasting, you’re going to typically find between 40 – 60ml of wine is served. This is a good quantity to start with in the glass (don’t worry you can add more later!).
An ideal tasting environment is going to be one where there is natural lighting. This allows you to actually see the wine clearly. It is also odour free so you can smell and taste is free of other influencing aromas, and one where you have sufficient space.
If you’ve just brushed your teeth or you’ve had a strong meal prior to tasting that is going to contaminate your palette. So if possible try to avoid that if you are doing an actual tasting or want a pure tasting experience.
Looking at the wine
Next we are going to look at the wine. We want to check whether it is clear or hazy in appearance. For the most part, most wines are going to be clear. Some winemakers deliberately make wines which are going to be hazier, but generally a hazy wine is going to indicate a fault unless you know specifically that wine has been made in a hazier style.
Next we’re going to angle our glass to 45° to allow us to look through the wine more easily. You will notice the intensity of the colour is different at the centre to how it is at the edges, if there is some variation and the wine appears almost clear (white wines) or lightly pigmented (red wines) at the edge, we would describe that as a pale wine. If its pretty much consistent from centre to edge, we would call that a deep coloured wine.
We also want to try to determine what colour the wine is. Yes, it will be ‘red’ or ‘white’, but here we’re talking about shades. Is it a lemon shade of white wine, or is it more golden? It is a purple shade of red wine or more ruby in colour? Our key shades are:
White – Lemon Green – Lemon – Gold – Amber – Brown
Rose: Pink – Salmon or pink/orange – Orange
Red: Purple – Ruby – Garnet – Tawny – Brown
It doesn’t matter if you can’t exactly identify these colours, but its often useful to compare two wines with each other in terms of their shades – which is lighter, darker, more intense, less intense.
Smelling the wine
Before we start necking it back, we are first going to see what aromas we can pick up in the wine. We discussed some of the types of aroma in earlier posts, so feel free to circle back and explore some of the main groups in those posts. We’re trying to see whether the aromas are intense and strong, or subtle. We’re also exploring what those aromas are. In a previous post we explored the primary, secondary and tertiary aromas, these are going to give us clues about the varieties, processes, age and style of the wine.
Tasting the wine
Let’s be honest, this is the bit we’ve been patiently waiting for! In order to really taste a wine though, we going to do a little more than just sip and swallow. Firstly, we’re going to take a sip and we’re going to swish it in our mouth, almost like mouthwash. Why? Well, there are taste buds and sensation sensors all over our mouth and we want to give them all a chance to experience the wine.
If it is socially acceptable to do so, it is also helpful to draw in some oxygen through the wine. The best way I can describe this is the action of sucking through your teeth with the wine still present in your mouth. This will allow some of the aroma compounds to mix with oxygen releasing more potent smells and flavours. Be warned, doing this takes some practice and makes you look like a bit of an idiot if you do it in a restaurant on a first date for example, so I recommend social awareness in deciding whether to oxygenate your wine this way.
We can eventually swallow, although some professions will use a spittoon. Unless, I’m tasting professionally, or tasting a quantity of wines, I want the full experience!
So the taste of the wine and the sensations in the mouth are going to usually be multiple. This topic on its own could take up a whole series of posts, but as a quick guide:
Sweetness – Most of the wines we drink now are what would be described as dry. However, there is often a deliberate decision to leave some sugar in the wine. Most of us know what something sweet tastes like, and the same is true of wine.
Acidity – All wines are going to be acidic, is a quality of wine. However, a very acidic wine is going to cause you to salivate. Its going to taste very fresh and bright in your mouth and you’ll be producing saliva. Sometimes sweetness can mask acidity and vice-versa, so its good to check the mouth watering.
Tannin – Tannin is a drying sensation, especially on the gums or the sides of the mouth. Tannin is only present in red wine (and small amounts in rose). If you feel like you’ve been chewing saw dust and your mouth has gone dry, its probably tannin that caused that.
Alcohol – Hopefully we all know that wine contains alcohol. However, the higher the amount the more likely we are going to experience a burning or heat sensation after swallowing. The Alcohol can also make the wine feel thicker in our mouth (although so can sugar). The burning / heat sensation is different to the tingling caused by acid, but its easy to confuse the two.
Body – This is wine term, which essentially means how viscous the wine tastes in the mouth. The easiest comparison here would be the difference between a skimmed, semi-skimmed or full fat milk. Body comes from a mix of sugar, alcohol and acid. The first two making a wine feel fuller bodied (thicker) and the last making it feel lighter bodied (thinner).
Flavours – Here we’re looking at not only what flavours we can identify, but how intense they are. Generally, flavours will mirror aromas, but not always. As we discovered flavours could be of fruit, herbaceous or herbal characteristics, spice, yeasty notes, cream, vanilla, nuts, coconut, dried fruits, marzipan, mushroom, etc…far too many to list here. A good wine tends to have layers of flavours. We call this complexity.
Length – We’re also interested in how long the nice flavours last after you have emptied your mouth of the wine. We call this the length or the finish of the wine. Here we are not focused on how long until all the flavours or sensations disappear, only the desirable ones. Generally, a longer finish is an indicator of a good wine.
Mousse – Mousse is essentially a wine term for bubbles. We’re only going to usually get this in a sparkling wine, although wines with some residual sugar can give a similar sensation. Most sparkling wines have a ‘creamy’ mousse. Occasionally though you might have a sparkling wine which has an aggressive mousse with lots of fast moving bubbles or a more delicate one where they are much less prominent in the wine.
So, that is a very basic beginners guide to serving and tasting wine. I hope now you know that an aggressive Mousse is not a form of wildlife to run away from, and that if you don’t decant some red wines, you’re going to get a mouthful of unpleasant sediment. The key to tasting wine is practice. When I first started I thought I was terrible at it. Other people were describing things I just couldn’t taste. Over time I have got better. And if you are female, you are apparently much better genetically at wine tasting, so at least 50% of the population have an advantage!
There can be a lot of snobbery around wine, and honestly, not every bottle I open or every glass I taste I’m going through the theatre described above. Sometimes it just nice to reach for something familiar after a long day in the office and enjoy it without analysing it. But I’ve also found that being able to taste wine has increased my enjoyment of it and broadened out my willingness to try different wines, which has led to some really great discoveries.
I hope you can take something from the post above and it enhances your enjoyment of wine. In the meantime, keep exploring this beautiful planet we live on, one glass at a time!