The Basics of Tasting Notes in California Wines and Others

Whether you're comparing several different Bordeaux Cabernets or just have a new selection of California wines to enjoy with friends, growing as a wine drinker means learning to understand the basics of wine tasting notes. To some degree success in accurate wine note identification is a matter of your wine palette and how developed it is, but just knowing what you're looking for and then experiencing it a few times goes a long way to developing your wine tasting ability.

Wine tasting has three distinct stages. The notes of the wine only matter in the second and more fully in the third. The first is looking, the stage during which you swirl the wine to observe its color, transparency, and legs. The second phase is smell, in which you put your nose into the glass to test the aroma of the wine. Since your tongue can only register four taste, while your olfactory receptors are much more complex and sensitive, the smelling stage is actually where you first identify the nuances of the wine.

Smelling a wine is generally done in three steps. First, you swirl the glass of wine for several seconds to allow it to vaporize and intensify the smell, and then take a whiff from the top of the glass. After appreciating that, swirl some more and put your nose into the glass itself - this is why red wine glasses have such large openings. This is when you get the best exposure to the full complexity of a red wine's aroma and begin to identify its notes. You might detect specific fruits, citrus, a floral smell, oak, butter, vanilla, or even cut grass, as well as vinegar, cork, or sculpture. The final three are signs a wine has gone bad and you should stop your investigation there.

The final step for enjoying all California wines, red, white, and others, is tasting. Your tongue only has four receptors, sweet, bitter, tart, and salty (although this is a simplification - it's a more complex savory taste for which English doesn't really have an adequate word). Salt is obviously not an option in wine, so you'll be evaluating it for its sweet, sour, and bitter. However limiting the tongue is, it does allow you to recognize notes of all the same things as with the nose, only with less accurate sensitivity. During tasting, be sure to swirl the wine around every part of your tongue and pay attention to the various flavors you notice. Specific fruits, sugar, acidity, various woods and minerals, flours, and a variety of other things can be present in the taste. As an amateur, the goal is just to take your time to see how specific you can get with as many as possible.

Tasting is about more than just flavor. You should also evaluate how the physical substance of the wine feels in the mouth. A high tannin content will make it feel like you have a dry teabag sucking up moisture and can actually coat the entire mouth. Wine also has a body, which describes how full, heavy, or thick the wine feels. It's similar to the difference between cream - full bodied - and skim milk - light bodied. This makes way for the final stage of enjoying the taste of wine and its notes, which is to evaluate the balance and combination of all the factors you recognized and enjoyed.

Whether your wine budget only reaches to small, inexpensive California wines or you can afford old vintages from the most famous vineyards, you will appreciate the drink more if you take the time to actually recognize and enjoy all the various complexities present in the glass.

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