A Wine Spies Publication
First Edition
How to Taste Wine - Like a SpyPart 1 in an ongoing series
from The Wine Spies - the undercover wine country agents that have been bringing you one
exceptional, hand-selected
wine each and every day -
since 2007.
1How to taste wine - like a Spy.
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© Copyright 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-tem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-ing, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of the pub-lisher.
DisclaimerAll the material contained in this book is provided for educational and informational purposes only. No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.
While every attempt has been made to provide information that is both accurate and effective, the author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.
Copyright
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This guide to How to taste wine like a spy... is dedicated to all of the customers - our loyal Operatives – who have been a part of the Wine Spies family over these last thrilling eight years. Without you we would not be on this continuing mission to seek out the best wines for you.
Dedication
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Thanks for signing up for our mailing list - and for downloading this guide to how to taste wine - like a spy. We hope that you find it informative and even entertaining.
If you have any feedback or questions for us, please email us at [email protected]
About The Wine SpiesThe Wine Spies was founded in 2007 by our Director, Agent Red. He founded the organization on a simple principal: Care-fully vet and select one superior wine - each day - for wine lov-ers across the country, presenting a ton of accessible and fun to read information on each wine. More than 5000 wines and several hundred thousand orders later, The Wine Spies contin-ues to serve its customers (who we call our Operatives) with great pride - and great care. Our Operatives are the reason we do what we do.
The following guide is Part 1 in an ongoing series of publica-tions that are designed to advance your skills in selecting, tast-ing, storing and enjoying wine - no matter who you buy it from.
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Section 1
Introduction
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(... or a bit of silliness before we get to the actual guide)
It’s just another day in the life of a spy
You’ve been dropped behind enemy lines, equipped only with your new identity, a flash drive, and a chewing gum wrapper that, when folded properly, becomes a high-tech corkscrew. You turn a corner, only to be rushed from both sides by two huge thugs with shiny bald heads. Before you can reach for the gum wrapper, a cloth is placed over your face and the world goes black.
When you wake up you’re in a small, dark room. Your arch ri-val, Dr. Bordeaux, is sitting across from you, twirling his mus-tache with one hand. There is a small table in front of you, set with multiple glasses of wine, both red and white, in all manner of hues.
You will be released if you can choose the correct glass of wine, first the white and then the red. The correct white is ex-tremely acidic and the correct red is very tannic and high in alco-hol.
Your pulse races, you can feel the sweat start to appear on your forehead. Silently, you curse yourself for skipping wine tast-ing day at spy school…
Don’t worry, we’re here to help!
Section 2
Prologue
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SPY TIP: What you see isn’t always an indicator of what you’ll taste.
The first thing you want to do is look at the wine. Really study it. Gaze at it. Broodingly. Against a white background, like a piece of paper, is best, though you know you can use whatever is close at hand, like your parachute.
Look at the wine, tip the glass, study the color and the clarity. In a red wine, excess sediment and/or a reddish brown color can indicate age. Dark purple hues can indicate a varietal like Syrah or Malbec.
If your subject is a white wine, cloudiness can indicate a flaw or lack of filtering of the wine. Don’t worry, unfiltered wines can be a great thing. Unfiltered wines can have greater complexity.
A glossy appearance can indicate a new world wine that has been aged in stainless steel. A greenish tinge can indicate a youthful wine or a varietal like Pinot Gris.
White wines will also darken considerably as they age, and des-sert wines, like Sauternes, can go amber or brown and still be deliciously drinkable.
Now give the wine a hearty swirl, or tip the wine toward the rim of the glass and tip it back again and study the streaks of wine as they flow down the inside of the glass. These are what we call the legs. Do the legs move quickly down the side of the glass, or do they take their time? Are they saturated with color or are they clear? Slower moving legs move can be an indica-tion of how much alcohol and/or sugar the wine contains.
Section 3
The Look
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SPY TIP: As you go through life, smell EVERYTHING, then lock those aromas into your personal databanks. You can re-call these later, as you are smelling a wine.
The first thing that any good wine spy knows is that tasting wine actually begins in the nose. For this reason, the first thing you have to learn is the swirl.
You know the swirl. You’ve seen other people do it and, as a spy, you must learn to do it with a sensual suavity that will make observers swoon. Don’t be too vigorous with your swirl, though, because nothing is less suave or sexy than a glass of wine splashing up in your face.
The swirl is not just for show, it serves a practical purpose in the wine-tasting journey; it volatilizes the esters. That’s right, now you’ll sound like a pro too. All this means is that the action of swirling the wine makes more and more of the delightful little scent molecules airborne, which means that when you sniff, more aromas are available to travel up into your nose and give you clues about the wine.
SPY TIP: You can stick your nose into your glass and inhale deeply, but try a variation where you open your mouth and breathe in through both nose and mouth. This technique give you more ‘sensory real estate’, allowing you to discern more nuances.
THE FUNDAMENTALSThere are a few basic categories of aromas that you are looking for when smelling a wine: Fruit, Non-Fruit, Earth/Mineral and Oak.
As you are smelling a wine, remember what you are smelling - or take a few simple notes. It is a fun exercise to compare what you’ve smelled to what you later taste in a wine. How do those things compare? You’ll be surprised to find that what you smell is often quite different from what you taste.
FRUIT AROMASThis is often the easiest place to start. Red wines will include dark fruits like blackberries, blueberries, and plums, red fruits like cherries, straw-berries, raspberries, and cranberries, but you can do better than just dis-cern which fruit you smell because everyone knows that a good spy goes further.
Try to tell whether the fruit smells like an unripe plum, or like a fresh, juicy ripe one. Does it, in fact, smell like plum jam, or like a prune (a dried plum). Often the older the wine, the more likely it is to smell like dried fruits versus fresh ones. Does that raspberry that you are detecting smell like it is underripe, or even still on the bramble bush? An ability to detect these subtleties is what separates a true wine spy from a wine neophyte.
In white wines, the fruits will be more along the lines of citrus (lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange), stonefruit (nectarine, peach, plum) or tropical
Section 4
Smell (aka The Nose)
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fruits (pineapple, kiwi, guava and mango) or apple, pear or some other fruit.
Why does a wine smell like blueberries when there is no blueberry in it, you ask? This is because the chemical compounds found in blueberries can also be present in wine. Of course, those same chemical com-pounds may also be present as you taste a wine. More on this, below.
NON-FRUIT AROMAS These are the more subtle scents that will really let people know you are a master wine spy. They are often more noticeable in Old World (Euro-pean) wines than in New World (California) wines. New World wines are more likely to be what a spy like you calls “Fruit-Forward”, or full of mostly fruity aromas.
These non-fruit aromas may include: flowers; like roses and violets in red wines, honeysuckle and jasmine in whites - spices like ginger, cinna-mon, cloves, nutmeg - herbs like basil, oregano, pepper, and grass. Other aromas may manifest themselves, like green pepper, coffee, yeast or bread, almonds, hazelnuts and… cat pee.
What was that last one? Indeed, a spy like you knows that some Sauvi-gnon Blanc can contain aromas (subtle or otherwise) like Uric acid, which is the technical term for the above mentioned distasteful term. Some say it can even be a positive attribute. Some, not all. It is all a mat-ter of personal preference.
EARTH/MINERALThese terrestrial descriptors really serve to reveal more of a wines mys-teries, secrets - and subtleties. Wines carry aromas beyond fruit and
spice. They can also smell like the earth in which the grapes were grown, or like the minerals contained within that soil.
Some wines may smell of clay, or iron; white river rocks or limestone; chalk or flint. Other amazing earthy aromas may be present: wet soil, dry or wet leaves, mushrooms, truffles, pine needles, tobacco, smoke, leather or even wood.
OAKMany wines are aged in oak, and that oak can impart scents like choco-late, vanilla and even butter into wines. Often, the presence of oak on the nose may portend a silky or plush feel in the mouth.
ALCOHOLAlcohol can be tasted, but it can also be detected by your nose. Wines that are made from very ripe grapes will have a higher alcohol content and may create a slight burning sensation on the nose and eyes, some-times causing people to cough. That can be an indicator that this is a New World Wine, since these wines tend to be made from riper grapes than Old World Wines. It can also indicate that the wines are from a hot-ter climate, where the grapes ripen more.
Note that some higher-alcohol wines can be very good at keeping their alcohol covert. It is a good practice to always take note of the ABV% (Al-cohol by volume percentage) on the bottle before imbibing.
SPY TIP: The amount of alcohol in wine can range from 9% to 16%. Most wines fall within the 12.5% to 14.5% range.
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DETECTING FLAWSIf a wine smells musty, moldy or like vinegar, it may be flawed. For some, these smells are enough of a deterrent to going further with a wine. For the adventurous, these smells can be an invitation to delve more deeply into a wine. Further exploration (tasting) can be revelatory. You might just find that while the nose was funky, the taste of the wine (the palate) is de-licious. So, was the wine flawed? Experience will help you to find the an-swer. If it smelled bad and tasted bad, it was probably bad.
A final word on getting good at smelling wineIf you are wondering how you can train yourself to better identify all of these different types of aromas, the answer is: practice, practice, prac-tice.
Go to a produce department or a farmer’s market and smell the fresh pro-duce and fresh herbs. Go through your pantry and smell all the dried herbs and spices there. Smell the jams in your fridge. Smell any dried fruits you may have around. Go outside and smell the flowers, the leaves and yes, the dirt. Then lock those aromas into your personal memory banks. The more real world aromas you have in that clever brain of yours, the more you’ll be able to detect aromas in wine.
SPY TOOL: This $6 Aroma Wheel from the University of Cali-fornia at Davis can be a great help to you in picking out indi-vidual aromas in a wine.
Wine Aroma Wheel Copyright A.C. Noble 1990, 2002
www.winearomawheel.com
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So you have swirled and sniffed - and you’ve locked those aro-mas into your mind (or written them on a sheet of paper) - and now it’s time to taste and feel the wine, to see what further se-crets can be revealed.
When you first taste the wine, ask yourself does the taste or ‘the palate’ reflect the nose or not? Can you taste the same things you smelled? Does it taste like the red raspberry you smelled, or does it taste more like cranberry?
SPY TIP: Your entire mouth is a playground where you can sense the flavors and the feel of a wine, not only at differ-ent sites on your tongue (tip, center, rear, edges), but also at the roof of your mouth, along your gums and even in your throat. Pay attention to what you sense at each of these locations.
MOUTHFEELIs the wine full and rich in your mouth, or is it more light and re-freshing? Can you taste the alcohol or is it subtle and well inte-
grated into all the rest of the flavors? Does it have an elegant or silky feel?
SUGARDoes the wine taste sweet - or does it have more of a dryness? From a brut champagne to a demi-sec (mildly sweet. See? You’re learning) Chenin Blanc or Riesling, or a very sweet Sau-ternes, there is a spectrum of sweetness in wines, and you can explore them.
TANNINS Tannins, or tannic acid, are natural substances that occur from grape seeds, stems and skins that get fermented along with the grapes. Wood aging can also impart tannins. Tannins are the substances that cause a drying sensation in the mouth.
Tannins that are too high can make a wine bitter, harsh or un-drinkable.
Red wines are almost always more tannic than white wines. The exception to this may be in some new world white wines, like a barrel-fermented California Chardonnay. Those can have oak aplenty.
SPY TIP: If you are looking for a great example of non-wine tan-nins, brew yourself a strong cup of black tea with no milk or sugar.
Section 5
The Taste (aka The Palate)
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That puckering or drying feeling that you get on your tongue, lips and cheeks are the tannins.
ACIDITYWhere tannins are drying, acidity in wine is what causes your mouth to water. Think of the difference between biting into a sweet nectarine versus biting into a lemon. Acidity in a wine re-veals much about where a wine comes: colder climates will yield less ripe, more acidic grapes, thus yielding a more acidic wine. Rieslings are notoriously high in acidity. Wines that are high in acidity are generally more food friendly than those with lower acidity.
SPY TIP: As you taste, pay attention to how similar - or dif-ferent - the Nose was from the Palate. These differences serve to highlight how individualized your own organolep-tic skills (the ability of your sensing organs) are.
FRUITRemember those fruits that you smelled on the nose of the wine? Now is your chance to identify which fruits you are tast-ing - compare what you taste with what you’ve smelled. Are the flavors more or less pronounced than they are on the nose? What unique flavors are present that don’t have a corollary to the nose?
EARTHThe earthy flavors in a wine can take on many forms. These fla-vors may taste like dry earth, minerals, slate, chalk, river rock, damp earth and more. The roof of the mouth is a great place to detect earthy elements.
WOODWoody flavors are imparted not only from the oak barrels that many wines are aged in, but also from grape seeds and stems and even some grapes themselves. Oak can have the flavor of sweet spice, vanilla, caramel, smoke and more. Oak can also impart a gritty or grippy feeling. Look for wood flavors on the middle and back of the tongue.
SPICEAs you’ve just read, spice flavors can come from wood, but it is also present in many grape varietals, red and white. Some bolder reds like Shiraz/Syrah, Petite Sirah, and Petite Verdot can be loaded with spice. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and other reds can have plenty of spice as well. Do you taste baking spices? Clove, cracked black pepper, white pepper? Is the spice that you are tasting a sweet spice? Savory?
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DRYNESS and SWEETNESSThese are two sides of the same coin or the two ends of the same spectrum. Sweet wines are not dry, and vice versa. Re-member though, we’re talking about a spectrum. That is, there are off-dry wines that have a hint of sweetness and there are semi dry or demi-sec wines that are somewhere in the middle. Pay particular attention to how the sweetness that you taste is influenced by the fruit. The sweetness that you detect may not be related to the fruit at all. Is there sweetness on the finish?
ALCOHOLLook for the sensation of heat on the palate, chest or throat. Some red wines, especially California Zinfandels, can be very high in alcohol. The same goes for a Port, which is fortified with spirits. White wines are generally lower in alcohol, which helps them to be more fresh tasting and refreshing than their red brethren.
BALANCEThink of balance as the harmony that exists between all of the flavors in a wine. If a wine is extremely tannic, are the fruits overpowered? In a very fruit-forward wine, do the spice or earthy elements take a backseat to the fruit? If every flavor ele-ment is in harmony with the others, then your wine has great balance.
COMPLEXITYThis is a very important term, but it is one that is often misunder-stood. Complexity connotes the sheer number of flavors and aromas that exist in a single wine, combined with how much the wine changes on the nose and on the palate as you drink it. A wine that has only a few primary characteristics, like “cherry and strawberry” are simple. Those with “Bing cherry, Alpine strawberry, cigar box, pencil shavings, shiitake mushroom, cori-ander and toasted anise seed” are more complex. Pay attention to how a wine evolves in the glass as you swirl and sip it. If that cherry and strawberry wine has only cherry and strawberry from start to finish it is, again, a simpler wine. If that other wine changes as you go, “... after some hearty swirling, the wine be-gins to show notes of rhubarb pie with cinnamon and cassis...”, then you have a wine that is even more complex than you ini-tially found it to be.
SPY TIP: Decanting or vigorous swirling can smooth out a cantankerous (tannic, brash or harsh) wine, or make a sleepy wine spring to life, revealing more fruit and complex-ity than you tasted on opening the wine.
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SPY TIP: In general, a long finish is the mark of a great wine. It doesn’t matter who made the wine, how much it costs, where it’s from. The finish is usually the place where you’ll determine whether or not you love the wine.
The finish is a way of describing how long the flavors of the wine linger in your mouth. In general, the qualities of the finish can aid you in determining the overall quality of a wine.
So, what makes for a pleasing finish? Well, as with all things wine, this is very subjective. It all comes down to personal taste, though there are some universally accepted qualities that please even the most discerning Operatives.
Length of finish is an easy attribute to ascertain. How long do you detect the flavors on your palate? A long finish is always de-sirable. A super long finish is a thrill. Pay attention to how fla-vors linger on the palate after you’ve swallowed your sip. Do fla-vors last a long time, or do they seem to fall off a cliff? Does the fruit that you taste outlast the oak, mineral or spice elements? Which fruits or other elements linger the longest?
Why is the finish so important? Well, sometimes you won’t even know if you like a wine - or even fully appreciate its flavors - right as it enters your mouth. On the finish, though, flavors can actually emerge onto the palate. This sort of dynamic finish can be fun, and very informative about the wine that you are drink-ing.
Section 6
The Finish
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A message from Wine Spies CEO, Agent Red:
Thanks for reading our guide to How to Taste Wine like a Spy. I hope that you’ve learned a thing or two in the process. If you have any feedback on how we can make this guide even better, please let me know. In fact, I love hearing from you on how we can make our services even better. Have you got a hot tip on a great wine? Shoot me a covert email. Have feedback on a re-cent order? Let me know.
Be sure to stay subscribed to our list to receive free future in-stallments of our informative guides on how to make the most of your wine enjoyment. Upcoming, we’ll have guides on Wine Buying, Proper Storage, Wine Pairing and more.
Remember, we showcase at least one carefully selected wine each day. We’ve been at this for more than 8 years and, with more than 5000 wines under our spy belts, we’re pretty great at selecting only the best wines - and at providing exceptional cus-tomer service. These are the reasons why our Operatives have stuck with us for all of these years.
If you are not a Wine Spies Operative already, we hope to wel-come you to the fold very soon.
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Section 7
What’s next?
