Conducting a Structured Wine Tasting.

If you have a variety of wines to enjoy along with a group of friends, doing so through a semi-structured wine tasting session makes it so much more informative and enjoyable.

Here are some pointers to a structured wine tasting.

You don’t have to be an expert to conduct a wine tasting session.  Guide your guests through the mechanics of the process but let everyone contribute to the discussion and learn from everybody’s experience.

Ideally there should be some sort of a theme or purpose.  For instance:

• Comparing a range of wooded whites, from lightly wooded to heavily wooded wines.  Same variety, different wood concentrations
• Learning the differences of different varieties.  A range of varieties.  Some whites followed by some reds.
• A selection of wines from a single producer.
• Vertical tasting of different vintages.  Same wine, different years.
• Comparing wines from different countries.  E.g. Sauvignon Blanc, from South Africa , New Zeeland and France.

First rule: All participants at a wine tasting are expected to come ‘clean’.  That means not smelling of anything, cigarettes, garlic, compost, B.O, perfume, aftershave or whatever.

A bottle of wine holds around 20 tasting portions.  If your friends are less disciplined, better have more wine or limit your group to less than 20! 12 to 20 people make a good size group for an enjoyable wine tasting session.  It means you can justify opening a variety of wines.  At our wine tasting club we normally sample 10 to 12 bottles among 20 of us.

Sequence

There are some rules governing the sequence in which wines should be tasted.  They are designed so that one wine does not affect the taste of the next:                  

White before red,
modest before fine, 
And dry before sweet.

 Tools you may need.

• A selection of wines is useful.
• A Corkscrew helps.
• At least 2 good wine glasses per person, preferably tasting glasses.  Champagne flutes make good alternatives.
• White place mats.  Sheets of white A4 paper will do.  Or print a number of copies of the accompanying document entitled ‘Placemats’.
• Water jug.
• Empty jug or spittoon in case you have some spitters.
• Brown paper bags if you plan to do a blind tasting.
• Pouring discs
• Cream Crackers
• Cloth to mop up spillages.
• I like welcoming guests with some sparkling wine otherwise they aim for the tasting wine in random order while waiting for the late comers!

Organiser’s duties

Ensure the wines are at the right temperature.   Serve whites at 12-14ºC and reds at 18-20ºC.

Open the reds half an hour before, decant them and return to the bottle.

Evaluate a small portion of each wine to make sure it is not spoiled, (corked, oxidized, etc.)

Serve the wines one by one. Allow the guests to evaluate and discuss each wine in sequence.   Allow about 10 minutes per wine.

If you want to compare some wines, serve them together, but be aware this soon leads to chaos with people mixing their glasses up.  I don’t know why but it becomes more chaotic later in the session.

Ask your guests to describe what they smell and taste and to comment on the wines.  You’ll find you don’t have to do much else.

If you like you can ask everybody to score the wines.

Scoring the wines

There are various scoring systems such as 100 point system, 20 point systems, star based systems etc, but all aim to do comparative scoring of:

• Appearance of the wine

• What it smells like

• What it tastes like

• And the overall impression

The 20 point score sheet on page at the end of this article is a simple guide to scoring a wine with some pointers about what to look for when tasting wine.

The appearance of the wine gives one a number of clues:

 Tilt the wine 45º and hold it against a white background.

White wines.

The wine should be crystal clear and free of floaters.  (Forgive pieces of cork)
A green tinge is a sign of a young wine.
Darker yellow can come from age, wood or sugar.

Red wines.

In general the following wines are listed from light red to dark opaque: 

Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Merlot, Pinotage, Shiraz .    

A maroon coloured rim is a sign of a young wine or a Pinotage.  As red wine ages the rim changes from maroon to ruby red to orange to shades of brown.  A mature wine may have three or more shares in the rim.  A brown rim means the wine is probably oxidised.

Nose the wine

Give the wine a good swirl in the glass to release the flavours and stick your nose right into the glass.  Concentrate as you take a good sniff.  Most information is gathered from the first whiff.   Thereafter your nose gets used to the aromas and you smell less and less.  Give if a few minutes before you try again.

The nose is a huge source of clues to the pedigree of a wine.   Mostly by the time you nose a wine, you can have a pretty good idea of what is in the glass.   Try to detect and name at least three aromas, fruit, herbs, spices or wood related.

Taste the wine

Take a sip and rinse it around in your mouth. Suck some air through the wine, if you like.

The tongue can only taste bitter, sweet, sour and salt.  So the actual tasting of the wine is a combination of what your tongue ‘tastes’ what your nose smells and what you feel in your mouth, nose and throat.  

Assess the sweetness, the acidity, the tannin structure, the fruit, the alcohol level, the aftertaste and secondary aromas.  Where in your mouth do you detect any of the clues.  Is it on the tip of your tnongue (sugar) to the sides (acidity) at the back (bitterness).  A sensation of sweetness at the back of the throat comes from highish to high alcohol.

Now formulate your overall opinion of the wine and try to put everthing you know and think about the wine into words.

Score Sheet
(Click to display the score sheet)

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