Wine Appreciation 101

When someone tastes wine for the first time, especially in India, they are instantly reminded of some Ayurvedic kadha (medicinal liquid) their mom or grandma made them drink. I know I was. I thought it tasted exactly like my cough syrup. Fortunately, my college held a wine appreciation course, for us hotel management students with aspirations to become a sommelier, and guess what! I actually started appreciating wine! Then, over time, I tasted some more wines, well, a little more than tasted, sometimes out of the bottle! Did a little more studying and now I'm here to impart my knowledge.

What is appreciating wine? It means developing a palate for wines, knowing what tastes to taste, which notes are there in the wine, the bouquets, undernotes, aromas, aftertastes, texture, the body of the wine. There are three stages in tasting wine.

• Look

• Smell

• Taste

Look: When you look at the wine, you see the texture, colour, and viscosity (thickness) of the wine. The look of the wine can give you a lot of clues about it. When you look at the wine, generally red, you hold the glass against the light, slightly tilted so that the light shines through the wine giving off the colour of it. A red held against the light can look anywhere from deep brown, maroon to deep pink. A white may range from light straw colour to deep amber.

The body of the wine can be distinguished by swirling it in the glass. When you swirl the wine, 'tears or legs of wine' or the wine that sticks to the side of the glass while swirling, and later when stable, it flows down, back to the wine should be observed. Thicker and more closely, together those tears or legs are, the sweeter the wine. The thinner and farther apart the tears, the drier the wine. Of course, if it's a blind tasting, you don't need this knowledge; just smell and taste do the magic.

Smell: Smelling a wine can tell you what tastes to expect. Think about what you smell the most to what comes to you the least, big to small. First, you'll taste all the grape aromas, sweet, sour, tannin-y, etc. The secondary note is generally yeast-related, cheesy, bread-like, nutty, stale beer-like. The tertiary or the least intense notes are flowery, fruity, oaky smells, tobacco, berry-like, spices, leather, etc.

Taste: The taste of the wine is the most important aspect of appreciating it. While tasting it, you have to inhale while you sip the wine and slurp while you do it. Let the wine explore all corners of your mouth. When you do that with reds, the sides of your mouth and the gums feel a little pull or may feel slightly as if they're shrinking or drying. This happens because of tannins in the wine. One can figure out the texture, or the viscosity of the wine, the mouthfeel as the wine touches the tongue or even the lips. The ethanol content in the wine can determine its texture and "ripeness", the more the ethanol, more the ripeness. The length of the wine is also another important factor in the taste of the wine. The length is the amount of time the taste or the aftertaste stays in your mouth. Here, the aromas that linger can also be considered as the length. The taste can be different at the tip of the tongue and at the back of the tongue.

Generally, even if the grape variety varies, the colour of the wine can give you an idea of what to expect from the wine.

Red: Red can be tannin-y, mostly it has a fruity, but not citrusy taste, like berries, cherries, black currant, and tobacco-like. Sometimes, like yeast, brioche, nuts, spices, chocolate, coffee, etc.

Blush/ Rose: Blush wines can be floral, light-bodied, and fruity. They're not as powerful as reds and can be a pleasant mix of sweet and acidic. As the color progresses from light to dark, the taste varies from dry to sweet and fruity.

White: White wine contains aromas like freshly cut grass, citrus fruits, lime zest, green apple, etc. These wines are generally light, fresh, and perky (if that makes sense).

This information is like the tip of the iceberg. There are so many aspects that come into play while tasting or even knowing about wines, the countries, regions, and types of grape variety are just some of them. Although I hope you have now gained some insight as to how to appreciate wines.

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