How to taste

A method makes your own impressions consistent. Two glasses assessed the same way can be compared; two glasses assessed however you felt at the time can’t.

• Visual - colour, clarity, shine, intensity, fluidity.
• The nose - how much it is giving you first, then what. A closed wine smells of almost nothing until it has had air; an open one gives everything up straight away. Then sort the aromas into families: fruity, vegetal, woody, mineral, smoky, balsamic.
• The palate - the flavours, the aromas that arrive from the back of the mouth, the balance between them, and the length.

Tilt the glass away from you at about 45 degrees over something white. You’re reading three things.

• Depth - how much light gets through. Deep and opaque suggests thick skins, long maceration, warm climate. Pale suggests the opposite.
• Hue at the rim - the outer edge where the liquid thins. Reds run purple → ruby → garnet → brick → tawny with age. Whites run pale green → straw → gold → amber.
• Clarity - bright or hazy. Haze can be a deliberate lack of filtration or a problem, and context tells you which.

Swirling, at this stage, isn’t for show. It coats the glass and increases the surface area the aroma can evaporate from. It also produces the legs - the streaks that run back down the inside of the glass afterwards - which tell you about alcohol and nothing else.

This is where most of the information is. The tongue detects five things - sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. The olfactory system distinguishes thousands. Almost everything you believe you’re tasting in wine, you’re in fact smelling, via the retronasal passage at the back of your throat.

1. 1Smell the wine still, before swirling. This gives the most volatile, most delicate aromas, and it is the reading most people skip.
2. 2Swirl, then smell again. More has been released. The gap between the two readings is itself information.
3. 3Judge how much it is giving you before naming anything - closed at one end, powerful at the other.
4. 4Sort into families before reaching for specifics. Deciding "red fruit" is reliable; deciding which kind of cherry mostly isn’t.

Take a decent mouthful, not a sip, and move it around. Some people draw air across it, which aerosolises the wine and pushes aroma up the retronasal passage. It makes an unattractive noise and it does work.

Assess structure before flavour, because structure is objective and flavour isn’t. Is the acid high or low? Is there tannin, and is it fine or coarse? Is there sweetness? Is the alcohol warm? Only then ask what it tastes of.

Then swallow or spit, and count. The number of seconds the flavour survives has a name and a unit, and measuring it’s the single fastest way to train your attention.

If you taste more than three or four wines in a sitting you either spit or you stop being able to taste, and then stop being able to drive. Every professional does it and nobody enjoys learning it. It’s also not a big deal either way: if you’re having a glass with dinner, swallow it.

1. 1Dress like you might be photographed - you won’t be, but you commit harder when you aren’t worried about your shirt.
2. 2Hold the glass properly, and taste the wine.
3. 3Lower your head over the spittoon and let gravity do most of the work.
4. 4Suck your cheeks in. Not hard - just enough to aim.
5. 5Wipe your mouth.
6. 6Do not be shy about it. Everyone in the room has done it badly.

Step three is the one that matters. Beginners keep their head up and try to project, which takes force and control they don’t have yet. Put your head over the spittoon and the wine mostly falls on its own. Your cheeks only need to aim it.

Lean over the bowl. Nobody needs to spit at distance. A few things I had to work out for myself: a spittoon with sawdust or a bit of water in the bottom won’t splash back, get close before you commit at a crowded tasting, and if you’re hosting, use something you can’t see through.

Understandably people are reticent when it comes to the art of spitting, and yet it’s an important professional skill. There’s an almost clean way to do it, with pursed lips, carefully controlling the speed at which you spit to hit the spittoon correctly, and avoiding spillage.

Émile Peynaud, Le goût du vin

The obvious worry is that spitting loses you the finish. It doesn’t. Length is counted after the wine leaves your mouth either way, and the aromas behind it come from what is still coating your mouth and throat. The definition of a caudalie says "after swallowing or spitting" for exactly that reason.