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What's a Tasting Note?
by Mike Supple
published: 16 Nov 2008 | Comments
With so many wine choices out there it is important to drink what you like, but when you're standing in a shop looking at 100 closed bottles, how do you know what's good and what tastes like vinegar poured through pig slop? (Or maybe you just don't like wine that tastes like yellow apples...).
I write tasting notes on wines to make your choices easier. By tasting wines in a controlled setting, I search for flavors and aromas that not only make the wine unique, but that are easy to identify with. A tasting note that says "aromas of black cherries and plums" doesn't mean there are cherries or plums in the wine itself, but that the smells of this particular wine remind me of those fruits.
Some wines are simple, and others more complicated. To be fair to the wine and make it as accessible as possible to the reader, I follow the same basic steps for every wine:
- Look at the wine and describe the appearance:
Looking at the wine helps me set up to better examine the flavors and smells. Wines that are really thick and dark in color are generally going to have a heavier and fuller body in the mouth. Brighter purple wines are usually younger and have fresher fruit flavors, while wines with hints of garnet, brick or an amber tint often have a bit of age and may have more complex flavors of earth, spices, leather, etc. - Swirl the wine in the glass and take a big whiff:
Swirling the wine mixes it with oxygen and intensifies the aromas making it easier (and often more enjoyable) to smell. Wine can produce hundreds of very complicated aromas, so I generally smell it, write down whatever pops into my mind (cherries, chocolate, cinnamon, pears, apricots), then give it a few seconds and repeat the process to pick up anything I may have missed. - Take a sip and swish it around, then spit:
Similar to the smells, wine flavors can be very complex and can include floral, spicy, fruity, vegetative, earthy, chemical, oxidized, woody, caramelized and microbiological (yeasty) among others. Beyond the flavors, how a wine feels in the mouth is important. Is it light or heavy? Low acid or high? These are important questions when deciding what wines to have with food, or if you know you just don't like heavy, dense reds. Since wine does contain alcohol, there are only so many wines I can taste at one time before my mouth goes numb. That's why I spit and move on to the next wine rather than swallow and catch a buzz.
Aromas and flavors are all very personal things, so just because I smell or taste something in a wine does not necessarily mean you will too. And of course if I've never had an orange, I won't be able to recognize the smell and tell you that a wine smells like oranges. However, by tasting thousands of wines a year, I improve my ability to recognize common smells and tastes that stand out in the wines - making it easier for you to find things in wines that you like.
Drinking wines that you enjoy is the most important end result. The tasting notes on SuppleWine.com are organized in a search engine so you can easily pick out what it is you want. Like wines that taste like nutmeg? Search for nutmeg. Prefer apples? Search for apple.
The final point of tasting notes is to get an idea of how well made a wine is. Did the winery do its job, does the Cabernet taste like a Cabernet, is it exciting, are there any flaws, and is it worth the money? I express this using a point system and a value grade to help guide you as to which wines are good, which wines are bad and which wines are worth your hard earned cash. If you want more details on this process, click here.
So the next time somebody pops the cork on a bottle, you can immediately go right in to the process: thorough visual inspection, swirl the wine for a while, take a big whiff, a tentative sip, think for a moment and say, "This fine young claret reminds me of summers in Brookshire. It has a pleasant air of dark fruit compote and is redolent of elderberries picked right before the morning dew burns off. Bravo to the winemaker, as this is undoubtedly his finest work." Or maybe not.
