I spy, I sniff, I slurp – using the senses to assess wine's quality

In judging wines by using the senses, people are handicapped by the way they assess other commodities. For instance, some judge a car by colour alone. Gas guzzling proclivity or lack of headroom may be overlooked if the paint job is considered attractive. Sometimes it’s the same with wine; if looks attractive and exhibits no obvious defects a novice taster tends not to be critical of the flavour.

The eyesight is the first sense that introduces us to wine, providing an initial reference point that is both informative and reassuring. At the same time it may also be misleading. Beginners tend to give weight to appearance because they can easily find words to describe it using their everyday vocabulary whereas finding words to describe taste or smell are more difficult. So, dark colour is are attributed to age and strength whereas pale wines are reckoned lightweight and dry. With more experience, we realise that this may be untrue. Red wines tend to lighten as they age, fading first to a bricky colour then, in old age, to pale brown. Aged riesling, deep gold, may only be 9% in alcohol.

I have organised tastings where the participants were actually physically blindfolded. In this state it’s almost impossible to distinguish whether the wine is white or red. You might like to try this with friends as an entertaining party game. As a follow-up, you could remove the blindfolds and hand them glasses of a white wine that’s been doctored by the addition of a few drops of flavourless red vegetable dye. With a little practice you’ll be able to produce a passable red and rosé that should utterly confuse.

Of course, those clever sods Riedel make dinky black glasses that do away with the need to play blind man’s buff. Expensiver though. They also make a snazzy clear tasting glass with a hollow stem. I love it. The glass is a bitch to use because you have to roll it on its side and be careful not to overfill. But, on the plus side, it uses on minuscule amounts of wine and yields up bucketloads of information faster than any other glass that’s thus far been invented. It’s like having a computer print out of the wine’s characteristics and qualities. I use it all the time at home. If you are tempted to buy one, be warned, don’t use it for casual drinking, that’s not what it’s meant for. This glass can actually make good wine less enjoyable.

Reidel's tasting glass

What does appearance tell you, apart from “an absence of bubbles in a sparkling wine is not a good sign?” Answer is ‘not a lot’. In whites, a deep yellow hue may reveal the wine as aged; or that it has been matured in oak. In reds, paler wines do tend to be less full-bodied. When a glass of wine, white or red, has just been swirled, you may see rivulets of liquid trailing down the side of the glass. These are generally referred to as tears, legs, or arcs and almost invariably denote high alcoholic strength.

The French have an expression, ‘le trouble’, for which English has no equivalent, meaning the suspended matter responsible for “cloudiness” in wine. It might be caused by over-chilling; if so, clarity will be restored as the wine warms up. Otherwise it could be caused by poor winemaking, poor storage or simply by ageing – geriatric red wines often throw heavy sediment. It’s at this point that the eyes outlive their usefulness. Now we need to bring the other senses into play before we make a judgement on the wine’s worth.

When we scent an aroma in a glass of wine, it’s habit that fixes the impression of fragrance at the tip of our nose. The actual perception takes place about 4 inches higher, just below the brain, so saying that we smell wine is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. Nevertheless, that’s what we call it and in the wine tasting world a good sense of smell is prized above rubies.

Wine contains any number of volatile substances that give off aromas, accentuated when the wine is poured into a glass and agitated. Newcomers to wine are often astonished to discover that very few actually smell ‘grapey’. Wines can, however, smell of fruit; Sauvignon blanc and gooseberries, Cabernet and blackcurrants are common. Everyone’s initial stab at assessing a wine is to say ‘nice and fruity’. Although this simple phrase has had the piss taken out of it by everyone from wine snobs to stand-up comics, there’s no need ever to feel ashamed of saying it.

Other aromas come into play and it’s these that make wine so fascinating – otherwise we could save a lot of money by just drinking fruit juice! Flowers, cedar wood, smoke, truffles, leaves crushed underfoot, rare beef and many other mementos assault the senses in a way we regard as ‘complex’. Finding complexity in a wine is the taster’s crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The nose’s other purpose is to isolate those smells that make for unleasant consumption – the wet wool of imperfect storage; the damp, musty newspaper of cork taint; the whiffy eggs of reduction; the farmyard stench of ‘brett’.

For newbies, a couple of tips. You’ll have seen professional tasters on telly swirling their wine, glass held high in the air. My advice is don’t. Plant the base firmly on the table and aerate the wine with a stirring motion. This will save you a fortune in dry cleaning bills. If you want to do it the way the pros do, practise in the shower. Don’t hurry the stage of smelling – it can tell you a lot but you may find it difficult to analyse the rush of sensations. Lastly, never forget that first impressions are usually best. If you go on and on trying to ‘get’ something from a wine, you’ll only go round in circles and confuse yourself.

Scanned and sniffed, next, we let the holy nectar pass our lips. Wine evolves on the palate, that’s a massive part of its charm. But the sensations don’t come in one big swirling crash-bang rush, they follow one another in phases. Each tells you something different about the wine you are tasting yet all combine to contribute towards the total pleasurable experience. Think of it as the difference between ‘orgasm’ and ‘lovemaking’.

With the initial mouthfeel, sweet and rich impressions predominate. Next follows a process of evolution which modifies, links and prolongs the initial flavours. The best wines develop in the mouth, filling the palate with enticing flavours which an experienced taster will be able to pin down and identify. For most, identification may be secondary to enjoyment. Why not, that’s why we drink the stuff. Wines showing these qualities are commonly described as ‘long’.

Sometimes however, the initial sweetness rapidly diminishes and acidity takes over, lessening the wine’s appeal. Such wines are said to be ‘short’. What happens next is faint bitter or astringent elements show up, stalling the physical enjoyment but serving to fix an impression of the wine in the taster’s mind which some call ‘aftertaste’. I prefer to use the term ‘memory’. Here’s the famous French gourmet Brillat-Savarin pontificating on the subject: “While the wine is in one’s mouth one receives a pleasing but imperfect impression; it is only having finished swallowing that one can really appreciate the taste and discern the bouquet particular to each type of wine; and then a few more moments are required to discern if the wine is good, passable, or bad.” Very pseud’s cornery, someone should have told him there’s no mystique. What actually happens is that the mouth, pharynx, and nasal cavities remain impregnated with the vapours of the wine so the senses of taste and smell continue to be stimulated.

Unfortunately, when it comes to tasting we all come lumbered with baggage. People who are insensitive to bitterness happily drink their tea and coffee without sugar while those who cannot taste sweetness easily will shovel three spoonfuls in the cup and think nothing of it. Some hate the taste of lemon juice or vinegary salad dressings and go out of their way to avoid them. My own father ladled salt on his dinner because his sensitivity to NaCl was impaired by heavy smoking. So, when push comes to shove, there are no absolutes, despite the fact that wine snobs like to tell us there are.

That concludes my mini-dissertation on the senses. Now let’s get back to drinking before we forget how good the bloody stuff really is!

Originally published as 3 articles in The Sunday Independent ‘Life’ Magazine