Tuesday, March 25 2008
Here Comes the Judging
Order in the court! Fine, I'll have a glass of Fino and a tapas plate, please.
Okay, on the topic of wine judging we've covered human senses and the uses of sensory evaluation, the human brain and interpretation errors, and olfaction and gustation. Just about the only thing we haven't covered is judging wine. The first step is how to taste. Sure, that's easy: pour it in your mouth and swallow, right? Not so fast, my little wine sponges! Analytical tasting breaks down into three separate actions: look, smell and taste. Seems simple, but there are procedures that increase your ability to observe, and the amount of information you can gather.
Look
To get a good assessment of the color and clarity hold the wine over a white background and tip the glass away from yourself. This produces a thin layer of of wine, much easier to see through than staring down through the glass from above. Even very dark wines show a transparent edge where they thin out at the edge of the glass.
Smell
Aromas travel from the glass to your nose as vapour. Swirling causes the wine to climb up the sides of the glass, exposing a larger wine surface is to the air. More wine evaporates, releasing low-weight molecular compounds. If you have trouble swirling free-hand, don't spatter the neighbours: put your glass down on a flat surface and move the base back and forth a half-inch in each direction in quick, fluid motions. This will get the wine flowing smoothly inside the glass without rolling over the rim.
Once you've got it a-swirl, immediately stick your nose into the glass and take a fast, powerful sniff. Remember, the speed at which an aroma molecule hits your nasal bulb governs how much information it conveys to your brain: hard sniffs mean more info. Three sharp sniffs, thinking about what you detect, and then stop for a moment. After the third sniff you will have reached olfactory accommodation, and you won't be able to smell any more. A quick sniff of fresh air and back into it. Suss out all the smells you can find before you move on to . . .
Taste
Take a small sip of the wine, about one to two teaspoons--no more. Move the wine to the front of your mouth and keep it on top of your
tongue. Pucker your lips as if you are going to whistle, but do not
blow out. Instead, tip your head down, and draw air into your mouth
allowing the air to pass through the wine. The effect is sort of like 'smooching' the wine. Do it in short bursts, as longer ones can sometimes see wine hit the back of your throat, causing coughing and embarrassment. This gurgle will run air through the wine to the back of the nasal cavity, increasing your perception of the aromas as you taste.
Work the sip of wine around the inside of your mouth, coating your lips, tongue, gums and palate. All of these surfaces have the ability to perceive aspects of the wine's character, so put them to use--'chew' the wine a little to make sure it goes everywhere.
Charming . . .
Spit or Swallow?
If you're judging a single wine just before drinking it for dinner or just for fun, go ahead and swallow. If you're judging more than a single wine and want to stay sharp, you'd be a fool to swallow. When I taste professionally I sometimes taste 100 wines in a day. If I swallowed just a couple of teaspoons of each one I'd be legally impaired before lunchtime. Opaque spittoons are a blessing for the faint-hearted.
Stop
What happens after you spit/swallow is as important as everything that goes before: the character of the wine will evolve and change as it warms up and dilutes with saliva across your palate. Pay attention to this change, particularly how long it goes on, because that's what's referred to as a wine's 'finish'.
Next, we'll go over what to look for, and finally the 20-point Davis judging scale.
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