What to Look For While Tasting Wine

While you are tasting wine, your mind will be racing to connect all the senses to determine whether or not you like the wine. So what should you be paying attention to?

There are only four tastes you can perceive, sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Wine contains no salt, so you should not taste perceive any saltiness so we can really only determine sweet, bitter and sour on our tongue when tasting wine. Any sour flavor will usually indicate acidity while bitterness is produced from tannins and high alcohol. You can usually tell this if you are a new wine drinker by what I call a "bite" when you take your first sip, tannins are not a taste, it's a sensation. Sweetness occurs in wines that have sugar leftover in them.

Sweetness will be tasted on the tip of your tongue and will usually be tasted right away. Any sour or acidic flavor will appear on the sides of your tongue against your cheeks and possibly at the back of your throat, while bitterness will grip you on the back of your tongue. The aftertaste of wine is important to think about in terms of how balanced the flavors remain in your mouth after swallowing. Aftertaste of excellent wines usually lasts 1-3 minutes.

As you combine what is happening to your taste buds with what you smell in the wine, you will begin to be able to differentiate between varietals and understand which wines you will like better.