Determining Aromas In A Wine Tasting

There’s more than just sipping wine at a wine tasting and deciding whether you like the wine or not, you need to understand why you like the wine. And you can accomplish this by being able to determine what aromas give a wine its character. One way to do this is learning how to properly release the aromas in a wine so that you can get as many descriptors as possible.

You might say experts at a wine tasting event taste wine with their noses, not just with their tongues as the nose imparts much of the information that goes into determining taste. Before even tasting the wine, a wine connoisseur will take a deep whiff of the wine to get a first impression. This exposes your tongue to more taste sensations when you finally sip the wine.

To understand how the nose affects taste, try holding your nose when you eat or drink something with noticeable aromas. You will find it difficult to pick out tastes without the aid of your nose. Sniffing and slowly analyzing a wine will impart much more info rather than hurrying through a wine tasting.

A person has taste buds that are replaced every few weeks. As you get older you regrow fewer taste buds which makes you less susceptible to flavors and aromas, tannins and acids in wine. While younger people might have a harder time developing a palate for those styles of wine.

A lot of young people turn to wine clubs or frequent several free wine tastings a month to understand which wines they like more. Think of it as when you bite into something how you can still smell something while you are chewing. Gnashing food releases aromas in the food which travels to your nose and stimulates your brain and helps you identify more flavors and ultimately determines what you like.

Women are more susceptible to their sense of smell than men. It’s a genetic predisposition. And as a result more women are inclined to frequent wine tasting events more so than men to find out what wines they are more attracted to.

Once you take the wine into your mouth you should slurp it to expose even more aromas. People at wine tasting events will hold the wine in their mouths for several seconds to let the wine work their taste buds to get maximum exposure to aromas. Different parts of the tongue taste the different flavors of salty, sweet, bitter and sour. Sloshing the wine around your mouth for some time will guarantee all parts of the tongue are activated.

With enough practice and attendance to as many wine tasting events as you can take part in you will develop a keen sense of determining wine aromas. Tasting notes and keeping a wine journal will also help. Eventually you will be able to decipher layers of flavors in wines and will be on your way to becoming a wine expert yourself.