Many people would simply say: “Just drink it!” and frankly that is absolutely fine. After all, consuming wine is supposed to be fun.
However, if you want to push the envelope to the next level, here is how.
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP Even before you open the bottle, think about the glass that will hold the wine. I have friends who prefer cheap glass tumblers purely because they hate breaking nice wine glasses. Remember its all about get the most enjoyment. If this is not an overriding concern, choose a stemmed glass with a large inwardly tapered bowl and thin glass.
This will help you get more aroma into your snout.
Take a good look at the colour and condition of the wine. If it is a young unoaked white, it should be pale and brilliantly clear (a Sauvignon Blanc should have flashes of green). An oaked white like a Chardonnay will be more golden.
White wines should have no haze, whereas as reds mature they may develop some crust. Most reds are difficult to see through anyway (apart from Pinot and Grenache), so we often focus on the outer rim of the wine in a tilted glass, where we can check its colour more easily. This rim can give clues about the age of a red wine.
FOLLOW YOUR NOSE Gently swirl the wine in the glass while holding the stem (don’t swirl a sparkling wine, the bubbles do that for you) and have a reasonable sniff. Don’t sniff too hard or too many times as you nose fatigues really quickly and you start to smell nothing.
Make sure there is nothing mouldy or dirty (although older bottles can smell strange for a moment or two and then clean up miraculously). Look for fruit characters (berries, flowers, stone fruits, tropical fruits), winemaking tricks like oak (vanilla, smoky, spicy) and developed characters like honey and toast.
The most important thing is that all of these characters are in balance, with no one element taking over. Some Chardonnays from the past (and unfortunately still a few now) used too much new oak and smelt more like a carpenters shop than a grocers.
FINALLY, PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH At last you are ready to put the wine in your mouth. Don’t take too much in and swirl it gently in your mouth for a while. When the wine hits your tongue, it warms, releasing loads more aroma to the back of your nose (this is called the retronasal effect). It is quite OK to draw in a little air through your mouth and aspirate the wine to enhance this effect, even if it sounds terrible!
You actually only get very basic flavour sensations from your tongue, like sweet, sour, salty and bitter, so using your nose gives you much more detail. Your tongue and mouth also give you the texture of a wine, mostly from tannins in reds. Tannins react with saliva and dry your mouth but in a range of possible ways leading to terms as varied as soft and silky to grainy and puckering!
Again, we are looking for a balance between flavours and textures and hopefully great length and complexity. Length refers to how long flavours develop in the mouth, while complexity refers to the sheer number of different elements in a wine that can hold your attention. Persistence is how long the flavour stays with you after you have swallowed or spat the wine.
This is a very brief summary – people take years to develop skills in sensory assessment of wine. But it should be a useful start!
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