Tip 3
Chip says:
“Loyal WACC members,
As you recall, we mentioned two things to do when drinking wine to remember more about what you have; take notes, and use a system. In terms of picking a wine to try, you can pretty much come up with any system you want, but what about a system for tasting the wines you pick?
We will walk through the different aspects of a process called deductive tasting, a tasting system used by sommeliers to help think about what they are tasting. For this week, we will discuss deductive tasting as a whole and introduce the different parts of the process. If you are tasting a wine using the steps below, taking notes on each step can help you create a great set of references for different wines you have tried.
1. Sight – Simply looking at a wine can tell you quite a bit about it. From a wine’s age to the types of grapes used to make it, a visual impression of a wine is the best place to start when tasting.
2. Smell (or nose if you want to get technical) – While the actual drinking part of a wine tasting is probably the most enjoyable piece of the process, smelling a wine is actually the most important part of tasting. Most of the detail you will get from your tasting experience will come from your nose, so having a smelling system when you are tasting can be helpful for learning as much as possible about the wine.
3. Taste (or palate, again for those technical folks) – Finally, we get to have some of the wine! In this tasting process, the palate is important as a confirmatory test of what you smelled. Perhaps you will taste exactly what you smelled, or maybe something completely different. Either way, you will continue to learn more about the wine as you proceed through the tasting.
4. Conclusion (for blind tasting) – If you are blind tasting, the previous steps can help you form a conclusion about the wine you are drinking and offer a guess as to what it might be.
Deductive tasting is great for learning about the characteristics of different wines or doing a blind tasting with your friends, so definitely give it a try next time you are tasting and practice some as we go through more details in the coming weeks. However, we all know some wine folks who can get a little intense about their wine drinking. Don’t let the process of learning or using a tasting system get in the way of just enjoying drinking a glass with friends."