Step 3 Tasting...

This is where we see that drinking is different to tasting, drinking is natural whereas tasting is a skill and as with anything, practice makes perfect!

Firstly lets look at the tongue and where we can detect certain basic elements. At the back in the middle we detect bitterness, the sides towards the back is acidity at the tip we find sweetness and tannin is detected around the gums.

Wine tasting can be seen as quite pompous and stuffy but when it comes to tasting it isn’t the most attractive of occupations, lots of slurping and spitting.

Take a nice mouthful of wine and sense how it feels in your mouth, where does it hit the tongue first, allow it to move around your mouth so it hits all the taste buds. When you feel confident purse you lips and draw a little air in. This allows the air to circulate and opens the wines flavours. Once you have swallowed or spat the wine out sense how much saliva comes back in to your mouth. This is a good indication on how much acidity is in the wine.

Your looking for a wine that is balanced of all components of fruit, acidity, alcohol and tannin they all need to integrate together. For example a classic dessert wine, although it is sweet and you want luscious flavours you need the acidity to keep it fresh. If there is a lack of acidity the wine can be flabby and flat and taste like a sweet syrup.

Tasting is not over yet we have step 4..