Taste Wine with the 4's

Something i wrote a while back:

A good wine has these four qualities Balance, Length, Intensity and Complexity (BLIC).

Wines with balance would have a harmonious combination of tannin, acidity, texture and flavour. The flavours may linger for a while on the palate and referred to as the length. The wine should be full of intensity. You should be able to taste different characteristics such as citrus, honey or burnt coffee. A flat wine is as good as water. With a beautiful length and intensity, the wine is of course complex, complex for the variety of aromas and flavours.

When tasting wine, keep in mind the 4 S’s.

See

Colour is a very important as it is able to give indications of the age, varietals of grapes and at times region. First make sure that you have a white background to view your wine. Just tilt the glass a little and observe the colours.

Young reds would carry a deep purple hue and as they mellow paler and softer reds are visible. The pale or soft hue appears at the rim of the wine giving a clue of its future hues.

But for whites, the pattern of colour change is different. The hues would deepen, turning into rich colours of yellow, gold, amber and brown. Rose and blush wines would adopt a bit of an orange or even brown colour as it matures.

It is possible for you to identify the varietals of grapes from the colour. This is because different grapes produce wines of differing intensities of colour. Pinot Noir tends to be pale purple and Rieslings has a green tinge.

Though this colour change is gradual, it can occasionally distinguish the wine regions. Cool climate wines tend to be less richly coloured, hence Burgundian Chardonnay will be paler than an Australian example.

Swirl

Hold the glass by the stem and give the wine a little swirl, careful not to spill. For this reason do not fill your glass more than half the glass. This increases the surface area of wine in contact with the air allowing the aromas to be more apparent.

Observe the oily droplets of wine that run down the inside of the glass after the wine has been swirled. Usually oily legs reflect high alcohol content and the presence of sugars, an indication of its weight and intensity.

Sniff

Once done, stick your nose in the glass a take a good sniff, and think about what aromas are coming up. Your nose is more sensitive than your taste buds and this sensitivity would help your taste the wine, hence your inability to taste flavours when you have a cold. The aromas of wine rarely smell of grapes but that is because the grapes most of us are familiar with are table or dessert grapes, which are quite unsuitable for making wine.

Young wines would have aromas relating to grape variety (ie limes for riesling and black pepper for shiraz) or fruit related for example blackcurrants and tropical fruits. Matured wines would have more secondary aromas such as the woody barrels, spices, tar or grass.

Sip

Take a sip of the wine and hold it on your tongue, breathe in to help release the flavour of the wine. Keep in mind what is ‘on the palate’ (used to describe the characteristics of the wine detected in the mouth). The weight of the wine in your mouth will tell you whether it's light, medium, or full-bodied. It also tells you how much sweetness, acidity, alcohol and tannin it contains. The object is for these elements to blend together rather than one to dominant.

Swallow the wine and observe the ‘finish’ (the flavours of wine tastes at the point of, and just after, swallowing) and the length. A lengthy persistence of flavour may be taken as a sign of quality.