Wine Tasting - Order, Characteristics and Scoring

By Scott Wells

When you have a wine tasting party or you taste wine with your friends it is very important to serve the wine in the proper order. The appropriate order of wine tasting goes like this. Elderly tasters are always served first, no matter what the gender is. Women will be served next. The men should be served after the women. The host is always served after everyone in the room has a glass.

When you taste different wines you also have to think about the order of the wines being tasted. If you taste heavy or sweet wines before light wines they may leave a taste in your mouth. This is because they tend to dominate the flavor.

A wine taster must taste the lighter wines first or their taste buds will be skewed for tasting other wines. The order wines should be tasted is as follows: sparkling, light white, heavy white, roses, light red, heavy red, and sweet wine.

If you have never tasted the wine it can be hard to know if it is heavy and if it should not be tasted first. You should assess the wines by other characteristics such as the nose, color, and appearance.

Assessing Characteristics

When you assess wine there are a few things to consider. The sweeter and heavier a wine it is you will be able to tell. This is by the swirling method. Red wines that are sweet and heavy will leave swirls on the glass, also known as 'legs'. This is why you want to drink your red wines out of a bigger bowl shaped glass. You need to be able to swirl the glass to assess the sweetness and heaviness of the wine.

The varietal wines present an aroma of the grapes. A good wine taster will be able to tell the varietal blends by the grape smell. Integration is also considered by a wine taster. Integration includes many different components such as acid, tannin, alcohol and others. These components must all be in balance. The proper term when a wine is in balance with these components is 'harmonious fusion'.

When a wine's quality is assessed the term expressiveness is used. This is when the aromas and flavors are well defined in the wine and clearly projected through the taste.

Scoring a Wine

There is a set system when you score wines. It is important to compare the merits of different wines. Different aspects are often weighed when you score wines. It is important to know how to score wines when you taste them with your friends. The aspects you will look at in the wine include the appearance, the smell, also known as the nose, the palate or taste, and the overall taste of the wine.

Not all wine scoring systems are the same. Some are weighted differently. For example, the appearance may be 15% of the score and the nose may be 35%. The nose of the wine being better on one glass of wine may make the wine score higher. Most critics have their own preferred system. It is important to come up with a system before you begin wine tasting so you and your tasters are not confused.

Scott Wells writes for http://MakeChristmasCrafts.com - where you can learn to Make Christmas Crafts just in time for the holiday season.

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