The Basics to Tasting Wine Like a Pro - Living & Local
The Basics to Tasting Wine Like a Pro · Look. Observe before tasting. · Smell. This is where you get the classic “berry on the nose” phrasing.
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Smell. This is where you get the classic “berry on the nose” phrasing. Bosker spends the first couple of pages of her book talking about how humans rely too much on the other five senses and forget to fine-tune their sense of smell. First, think big! Think about which fruits / berries you’re smelling. This initial smell has to do with the grape itself. Then think smaller. Yeasty smell? Vanilla? Nutty? These smells come from the fermentation + aging (barrels) process. PRO TIP: To help “expand your pallet” (or the link between your sense of smell and taste buds) <anchor>this article from Vogue</anchor> suggests practicing putting names to smells in your everyday life. Smell the fruits in vegetables at the grocery store, try to note and verbalize what exactly you smell walking through your day-to-day. It should eventually help you pick up on the distinct smell of a distinct wine.
How to Train Your Palate to Taste Wine Like a Pro | Vogue
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# Rose, Musty Basement, and Oak? How to Train Your Palate to Taste Wine Like a Pro

March 23, 2016

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Photographed by Bert Stern, Vogue, February 1961

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“The nose carries notes of crushed berries, fig, and fresh roses,” says the sommelier, describing the wine you’re tasting to decide whether to order a bottle. Does it really smell like all those things? Sure—to a trained palate. If you’ve ever wished you could detect such subtle nuances while smelling and tasting wine, the good news is that you can, it just takes some practice.

Some people are born with attentive taste buds—a few lucky ones out there are considered “supertasters” and experience flavors with heightened intensity—but for most of us, developing our palate takes persistent work. What we refer to as our “palate” is really an intimate relationship between our olfactory sense and our taste buds. A large percentage of tasting is actually smelling—try chewing a piece of stinky cheese with your nose pinched shut, then let go to open your nostrils and notice the difference when you can actually smell.

There are several concrete ways that you can improve your palate, and most of them are quite enjoyable as well. Over time, you’ll be shocked at how differently you perceive the taste of wine as you train your palate to detect nuances. Try these tips from winemakers, sommeliers, and industry pros, and evolve your tasting skills.

Start From Wherever You Are

Madeline Puckette, founder of the acclaimed blog Wine Folly and author of the recently published The Essential Guide to Wine, recalls the steep learning curve she experienced when first training to taste wine professionally. “I might be the living proof that anyone can improve her palate with a little effort,” she says. “I had to change a few drinking habits to do it, but once I did, I was able to accurately blind-taste wine [more about this below] in just a year or so of practice.”

Over time, Puckette watched her palate develop, and it transformed her entire relationship to food and wine. “Learning how to taste wine was one of the smartest things I ever did for my health. It seems counterintuitive, but the process taught me to crave more sophisticated—and healthy—foods,” she says.

Follow Your Nose Swirling a glass of wine before you sniff it will release its aromas by introducing oxygen to the juice and releasing its aromas. To do this, it is important that the glass is not too full. Place it on a table, pinching it between your thumb, pointer, and middle finger around the stem, and move it around in a circle. Then hold it up and really get your nose inside the glass—you’ll experience the bouquet much more profoundly. Close your eyes as you inhale. This is where the poetry comes in.

Puckette swears that following her nose was key to developing her palate. “The next time you’re about to eat or drink anything, smell it,” she advises. “This gives your higher brain the chance to start separating the aromas into distinct parts. Smelling is the reason why some people can detect raspberries in wine while others just smell something vinous,” as in winelike and alcoholic. When you properly swirl and sniff a wine, “suddenly, it becomes a pot of simmering cherry sauce on the stove or an uncanny aromatic equivalent to a musty basement,” says Puckette.

John Grochau, an Oregon winemaker, advises using the produce section of a grocery store to educate your palate. “Taking the time to smell fruits, vegetables, and herbs individually can really help to identify fruity or savory notes in wine,” he says. “Your olfactory system is tied directly to memory, so by creating the memory you have a better chance of identifying those smells and flavors later.”

Spice shops, too, can be a training ground for your nostrils. Grant Wheeler, beverage director at several New York City bars and the new Sicilian restaurant dinnertable, advises this. Spice shops “let you smell things and experience the building blocks of food in a purer and more accessible state,” he says.

To really train your nose, consider splurging on an “essences collection” set of 24 vials with scents commonly found in wine, used by wine professionals, perfumers, and coffee roasters to identify individual olfactory notes with absolute precision.

Learn the Art of Aspirating To truly taste wine in a way that educates your palate, you have to slow down and practice something called aspiration: rolling a sip of wine over your tongue and sucking air into it. Does it look weird at first? Sure. But by allowing oxygen to release more of the wine’s flavors, you’ll notice more aspects about how it was made, such as the oakiness or acidity.

Nick Gorevic is a bona fide supertaster and wine industry professional who consulted on the list at Brooklyn’s June Bar. “If you want to taste more, you have to practice and think about it with a critical eye,” he says.

Don’t be distracted by anything but the wine, Gorevic advises: “Really focus on what’s in your mouth and leave it there for a long time. Let it stay there, aspirate, and chew it around.”

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It’s best to observe aspiration in action to see what it’s like, or to listen to it, says Gorevic. “It makes a sound of air traveling through liquid—a soup-slurping sound. You might spill wine on yourself, or inhale it, the first few times,” he warns. “But keep practicing.”

Use Words to Solidify What You’re Experiencing At professional wine tastings, retailers and sommeliers walk around with a notebook, jotting down the aromas and flavors they experience. This is an easy thing you can do at home or at a restaurant, and over time it will help you identify distinct aspects of wines and discuss them more confidently.

“Whenever you do something that involves memory, and it includes more than one sense, getting the taste is one thing, and you also have to write it down,” says Gorevic. He recommends forming a mental image of everything in the surroundings as you taste a wine you really want to remember. “It’s a trick for memory,” he says. “You can bring in touch, sound, get a sense of where you are when you taste the wine—it’s about cultivating awareness.”

Over Time, Refine Your Vocabulary There’s no wrong way to describe a wine. A good friend of mine likes to say that a certain wine reminds her of “hot tubs and Sunday afternoons,” and somehow she’s absolutely correct. But certain words can actually be misleading.

Sweet is one of those; it is often used incorrectly to describe the sensation of fruitiness or even oakiness. Gordana Kostovski, beverage director of Volvér in Philadelphia, explains, “All wine is dry, not sweet, unless it has residual sugar.” Wines with residual sugar include dessert wines like Sauternes or Moscato, in which there is enough sugar left in the grapes before harvesting so that the juice never ferments dry. “It can be confusing since sometimes dry is used as a descriptor for the style of a wine,” says Kostovski. Usually, she adds, when someone uses sweet as a descriptor, it really “means fruit-forward,” which is another way of saying a wine is juicy, low in acidity, and possibly oaky.

When you are taking notes or verbalizing your experience of a wine, some things to consider are the wine’s body, acidity level, tannins, floral components, and alcohol level. Wine director Victoria James, who oversees the list at Michelin-starred restaurant Piora in Manhattan, has some helpful tips for deciphering these notes. To experience acidity, she suggests sipping lemon juice; for tannin, an “oversteeped cup of tea.” For body, her tip is to “taste the difference between skim milk, whole milk, and heavy cream.” And for alcohol, “concentrate on your palate’s reply to the next tequila shot you take,” James advises. “Now look for these reactions when you drink wine, see if you can pick up these different components and measure them on a scale of low-high for each wine. Most important, taste wine every day!”

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Drink, Drink, and Drink More James is right. Ultimately, the only foolproof way to develop your palate is to taste wine as often as possible. Scott Carney, who holds the rare title of master sommelier and is the dean of wine studies at the International Culinary Center, says that “there is no substitute for popping corks!”

Over time, through studious tasting, says Carney, you’ll build “a palatal memory, see more of the playing field, and discern features in a wine that you may have not noticed at first.”

But simply guzzling glass after glass isn’t going to train your palate. As mentioned before, it’s advisable to jot down your experience of the wine in a notebook. You might want to simultaneously do a little online research, perhaps on the importer’s website, to learn about the wine and where it is from.

And you’ll definitely want to take on the challenge of blind tasting. It took Puckette a year of training her palate to be able to successfully “blind” a wine. This refers to a common practice among wine industry professionals, in which wines are presented in bottles wrapped in a brown paper bag or aluminum foil, so there is no indication of what they are or where they are from—or even what they cost. It’s an excellent—and fun—way to evaluate wine without prejudice.

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