Wine tasting is the sensory evaluation of wine, encompassing more than taste, but also mouthfeel, aroma, and colour. The main aims of wine tasting are to: assess the wine's quality.determine the wine's maturity and suitability for aging or immediate drinking..detect the aromas and flavours of the wine.discover the many facets of wine, so as to better appreciate it.

To assess a wine's quality, one must gauge its complexity of aroma and flavour, determine the intensity of the aroma and flavour, check that the flavours and structural elements — such as acid, tannin and alcoholic strength — are well balanced, and finally see how long the wine persists in the mouth after tasting.

Practiced wine tasters will gauge the wine's quality in other ways too. These include, whether the wine is of high quality with respect to other wines of its price, region or vintage; if it is typical of the region it is made in or diverges in style; if it uses certain wine making techniques, such as barrel fermentation or malolactic fermentation; or if it has any wine faults. Many professional wine tasters, such as sommeliers or buyers for retailers, look for characteristics in the wine which are desirable to wine drinkers or which indicate that the wine is likely to sell or mature well.

Blind tasting

To ensure impartial judgement of a wine, it should be served blind — that is, without the taster(s) having seen the label. This is done because knowing the identity of a wine can prejudice tasters for or against it, due to its geographic origin, price, reputation, or other considerations.

Serving temperature

For a tasting, still wines should be served at between 16 and 18°C (60 and 64°F), even if the wines would usually be served chilled. At this temperature, the aromas and flavours of the wine are believed to be most easily detectable. It also ensures that the wines can be judged in a standardised way.

The exception to this convention is sparkling wine which is usually tasted chilled. The thinking behind this is that many sparkling wines can be unpleasant in the mouth when they are warm.

Glassware

The shape of a wineglass can have a subtle impact on the perception of wine, especially its bouquet. Typically, the ideal shape is considered to be wider toward the bottom, with a narrower aperture at the top ('egg', or perhaps, 'beaker' shaped). 'Tulip'-shaped glasses, which are widest at the top are considered the least ideal. Many wine tastings use ISO XL5 glasses, which are 'egg'-shaped. Interestingly, the effect of glass shape does not appear to be related to whether the glass is pleasing to look at.

Order of tasting

Tasting order is very important, as heavy or sweet wines can dominate lighter wines and skew the taster's assessment of those wines. As such, wines should be tasted in the following order: sparkling wines; light whites, then heavy whites; roses; light reds; heavy reds; sweet wines.

Without having tasted the wines, however, one does not know if, for example, a white is heavy or light. Before tasting, try to determine the order the wines should be assessed in, by appearance and nose alone. Remember that heavy wines will be deeper in colour and generally more intense on the nose. Sweeter wines, being denser, will leave thick, viscous streaks (called legs) down the inside of the glass, when swirled.

Wine tasting process

There are five basic steps in tasting wine: color, swirl, smell, taste, and savor. During this process, a taster must look for varietal character, integration, expressiveness, complexity, and connectedness.

Characteristics assessed during tasting

Varietal character describes how much a wine presents its inherent grape aromas. A wine taster also looks for integration, which is a state in which none of the components of the wine (acid, tannin, alcohol, etc). When a wine is well balanced, the wine is said to have achieved a harmonious fusion.

Another important quality of the wine to look for is its expressiveness. Expressiveness is the quality the "wine possesses when its aromas and flavors are well-defined and clearly projected. Overhandling the wine bottle can disturb its expressiveness. The complexity of the wine is affected by many factors, one of which may be the multiplicity of its flavors. The connectedness of the wine, a rather abstract and difficult to ascertain quality, is how connected is the bond between the wine and the land where it comes from.

The wine tasting steps

A wine's color is better judged by putting it against a white background. The wine glass is put at an angle in order to see the colors. Colors can tell you the grape variety, and whether the wine was aged in wood. Wine is swirled to allow more oxygen into the wine (by increasing its surface area), which releases the esters, ethers, and aldehydes which combined with the oxygen gives a wine's bouquet. Swirling aerates the wine and releases its aroma and bouquet.

A wine's quality can be judged by its taste and bouquet. The bouquet is the total smell of the wine. The flavor of foods is first experienced by the nose through the olfactory epithelium, which is a "tiny hingelike apparatus" where "aromatic molecules are caught and interpreted by approximately 15 million receptors." The aroma of the wine, which is the smell of the grapes, reveals a lot about its flavor before actually tasting it. The wine's nose, term used to describe the bouquet and aroma, are further released by constantly swirling the wine in the glass which exposes the wine to more air making it release more aromatics. Smells also helps to determine whetherthe wine is faulty.

The next step is the mouthfeel of the wine. Although the surface area of the mouth has little sensitivity to flavors, it does react to acid and sugar together. The tip of the tongue tells how sweet a wine is and the upper edges tell its acidity. Wine's aromatics are further released when exposed to the temperatures inside the mouth and the scent is reiceved by the interior pathway which also delivers data to the olfactory epithelium. Since there are taste buds all over the mouth, wine tasters leave the wine in their mouths for a few seconds in order to better taste the wine.

Thus, the tasting process is a combination of the aroma of the wine, perceived by the nose, and the way its mouthfeel. Thus savor, is the total experience of tasting the wine and capturing its characteristics.

Expectoration

As an alcoholic drink, wine can affect the consumer's judgement. As such, at formal tastings, where dozens of wines may be assessed, wine tasters generally spit out the wine while they are assessing its quality.

Visiting wineries

Travelling to wine regions is another way of increasing skill in tasting. Many wine producers in wine regions all over the world offer tastings of their wine. Depending on the country or region, tasting at the winery may incur a small charge to allow the producer to cover costs.

It is not considered rude to spit out wine at a winery, even in the presence of the wine maker or owner. Generally, a spittoon will be provided. In some regions of the world, tasters simply spit on the floor or onto gravel surrounding barrels. It is polite to inquire about where to spit before beginning tasting.