Learning how to taste wine properly

Grasping the colours, intensity and nuances

The colour of wine is revealed as an artist’s palette ranging from yellow to ruby, with a splash of cherry red along the way. More than enough to capture the imagination!

Intensity is also a criterion to define, from pale, medium, steady, dark, deep all the way through to intense.

CDT 33 - Yannick Serrano

Nuance is the colour of the wine at the rim of the glass. It is appraised by tipping the glass to enlarge the meniscus. This shows the age of the wine. A young dry white wine will have a greenish nuance, a red wine a violet or even bluish nuance. As wine ages, the nuance turns ambery or tile-coloured. At the final stage of their ageing, white and red wines take on virtually the same light mahogany colour.

Shine, transparency and viscosity

Shine reveals a certain “vivacity” of the wine, due to the level of acidity in the wine. In vocabulary terms it is defined by the words crystalline, glossy, shiny or, on the other hand, matte, dull, faded, etc.

Limpidity is associated with no cloudiness – observed by rotating a bottle sharply in front of a light to spot any sediment. A wide array of terms are used, including limpid, clear, transparent or, on the other hand, murky, broken, loaded, cloudy, hazy, etc.

A cloudy wine does not necessarily indicate a defect. Professional wine tasting, which takes place during or just after fermentation, is carried out on cloudy wines. More and more vinegrowers are producing wine which reports “no filtering” on the bottle. They reckon that the advantages (subtle and complex aromas) of slight cloudiness far outweigh the disadvantages. Knowing all this is a great help and, without turning each of us into an international specialist, it can truly put us in good stead for appraising a wine, or making better choices.

It is the fluid and mobile aspect that the wine presents when rotating the glass. Two points should be observed. The meniscus can be observed by tilting the glass and looking at the surface of the wine at the rim of the glass. The ring is formed on the side of the glass after swirling. The droplets that fall from this ring at a variable speed back to the liquid are called “legs”.

This phenomenon indicates the glycerol, alcohol and sugar content of the wine. The more legs there are, the higher the glycerol and alcohol content. The longer the legs take to run down to the liquid, the higher the residual sugar content. This stage in the tasting process mainly concerns great wines – opulent and rich – but above all sweet and dessert wines, all of which can be found in the Bordeaux Wine Region.

Having a nose for fragrances and aromas

Smell is one of the most mysterious of our five senses. The Nobel Prize for the discovery of the olfactory system was only awarded in 2004. The fragrant molecules dissolve in the mucus and act on the olfactory receptors.

Wine aromas are divided into primary, secondary and tertiary aromas: the first pertaining to the aromas of the grape variety, the second to the alcoholic fermentation and the third to ageing and the soils. They are influenced by the climate, soils, year of production and sugar content of the grapes.

There are also other tastes, such as tannins. It is easy to find this out in the Bordeaux Wine Region, where there is a whole host of tasting venues to visit.

Our website seeks to present a selection of addresses for gently letting yourself into the art of wine tasting.