gregorylane wrote:Great sense of humor WD and all at Woot!
Yes...I've got a Golden ticket.
rpm...and I do not bait you...will you give up some proper, simple, time-tested techniques and instructions on rating. Old school or new, I do not care. I am tasked with the 2002, and want to "do it up proper".
Oh, I want to eschew (heh) food pairing...so tell it to me straight!
Since I am not a rat (hey WD, what's up with that?!?), I suppose I should be gracious....
All I can do is tell you what I do. I score with the modified Davis system, but the numbers are not meaningful if you don't have real experience with it. Do get your hands on the wine aroma wheel if you don't have one. You can find a link to to it (so you can at see it and maybe print it out if you have a good color printer) at the Magical History Tour Web Site. (This is field expedient. Go to the Wine Aroma Wheel Website and buy one for yourself.
Get a pad to write on, and a pen or pencil to take notes.
First, about an hour (with a wine like this) before you want to taste, open the bottle. At this point, you might want to just take a whiff, and make a note of the aromas you notice. At that point, the wine will be very closed, and you may not get much: some fruit hints, maybe some alcohol or oak. Sort of a tease.
Then, after half an hour, sniff again, and note what, if anything, you smell. Pour a small tasting amount (1-2 oz or so)
Now after about an hour, you should be ready to taste. You should have no strong food tastes in your mouth. I prefer neutral crackers to clean the palate, along with water. I use either Bremen wafers (most neutral) or Carr's Water Crackers (plain). Have a cracker and some water.
Now you can get down to business: Examine the color of the wine, and take some notes about what you see. Swirl it around in the glass a bit, and now put your nose to the glass and take a good whiff. Make notes of what you smell. Use the Wine Aroma Wheel for aroma descriptions so that you'll have a common vocabulary with other tasters. Do this again, before you taste the wine. Maybe even three times. Depends on how clear (distinctive) the aromas are and how comfortable you are with the descriptive words you've chosen. Sometimes there are elusive things you have to sniff for several times before you can reach a tentative conclusion what it is.
At this point, you're ready to taste. The "approved method" is to take a very little bit into the front of your mouth (and onto the tip of your tongue). This is the "entry" where you will have your first flavor impression (rather than aroma). Then, opening your lips a bit, suck in a little air and use that to bring the wine across your tongue into the middle of your mouth (known as the "mid-palate"). And, finally, you take the wine into the back of your mouth, and then swallow. How it tastes as, and after, you swallow is the "finish".
NB. I spit almost all of the wine out before the swallowing the last bit to evaluate the finish, but that's probably unnecessary here. See below in the quote from the 2008 thread.
Many people will get very different, or at least very distinct impressions of a wine at each of these three 'points' in tasting. It is very helpful to others if you can descibe the flavors and sensation (or tactile feel, such as 'weight') in your mouth at each of these points.
If you can, take notes of all three. Ideally, you would be able to get really good notes from one thoughtful taste. More realistically, you'll probably need at least three to get it all sorted out, one to concentrate on the entry, one to concentrate on the middle palate and one to concentrate on the finish. Some people take their notes on the entry the first sip, the middle palate on the second sip, and the finish after the third sip. You're not ignoring the other parts, either confirming or altering your earlier impressions, but focusing on each part. Especially for the less experienced, that's a little easier.
At this point, take a small sip without being quite so conscious of each part to get your sense of the wine as a whole, and write that down.
You will notice (or not) whether the wine is acidic, tannic, seems smooth or 'flat' (often a problem with merlot), etc. and how well it's balanced, whether the flavors seem separated or whether everythings knits together well or not.
At this point - it's taken me longer to describe than it should take you to do it -- you're ready to taste the wine with a bit of bread and, then, if you like, to taste with some food you think might go well with it. And, you'll describe the food and how it went with it.
It all works best to do with someone else (or 3 or 4). If you do it with others, you can talk about your impressions after you've made initial notes at each stage, but you should note your own impressions before discussing.
I would have assigned points at each stage based on the modified Davis scale (out of 20), and come up with a rating, but, honestly, number ratings by those who are not seriously experienced or who have been trained, are meaningless. Far better is an honest description of what you tasted, and then how well you liked what you tasted.
Again, this is just a suggestion, and more or less what I try to do. If you like, check out the old thread A Cat Died in My Mouth! (or) How to Develop The Professional Palate YOU Want! for a very extended discussion about wine tasting.
From that thread:
It shouldn't. I don't think I've had a wine that I didn't give at least a 'quick and dirty' evaluation to in the past 50 years.
For most wines, and in most circumstances, my process is something like this: with some, based solely on the nose, I know it's probably not worth serious attention, and with the first sip into my mouth, I can usually decide how carefully to evaluate it. If it seems like something may be going on with a wine, I'll pay as much attention to it as seems warranted: that is, if there's not much going on, I stop paying close attention pretty quickly, but if there's a lot going on, I'll kick into serious mode and go to 'work' on the wine.
The other mode is when I'm consciously tasting seriously from the get go, which is usually at some sort of trade tasting or other (more or less) formal evaluative tasting situation - when I labrat, I take this approach as well.
In that mode, I've done some homework usually - reviewing prior notes and resources on the type of wines I'll be tasting. Then, I make sure I don't have any strong flavors in my mouth, or any cologne, or other distracting aromas around. (Women wearing perfume at trade tastings should be condemned to tramp grapes with their feet for a year or so!) and I try to eat mostly neutral bread in advance (that's tricky now with my diabetes). I also make sure I've got pencil and a notepad (or the program if there's one prepared. In these circumstances, I give the wine a swirl, and look at the color (over a white background and the legs. If it's a serious tasting, I'll make a note then and there on that), then a good sharp sniff, perhaps a second softer sniff (again making aroma notes at that point in a serious tasting), then a sip, aeration over the tongue, swish in the mouth, an almost complete spit into a spitoon, and just enough left to test the finish (which you don't really have to swallow to assess). If it's a fairly informal tasting, I'll take my all my notes then, if it's more serious, the balance of my notes. In an informal tasting with friends, I may talk about the wine along the way, but in a serious trade or connoisseur level tasting, I am careful not to make any comments or listen to anyone else until I have made my own assessment, and written it down. At trade tastings, with vinters and/or importers and/or wholesalers, I like to discuss the wines after I've evaluated them. And, in those discussions I try to speak technically about the wine rather than saying I love it or hate it or am indifferent to it. (Although sometimes it comes out...)
Tasting in the first way, I don't think you can evaluate more than 3-5 wines with any accuracy, though you could certainly say you enjoy them or not. In "professional mode" if I'm being really careful about spitting, I can probably try 25 wines before I have to take a 1/2 hour break or so, and be fairly confident I've been fair to each of them. I have participated in trade/professional tasting where I had to taste as many as 100 wines in a day, and a fair number of them pretty ordinary, at best. At that point, it really is work and not a whole lot of fun -- though usually at the end you can eat some pretty good food and have a couple of glasses of something really very good or (only occasionally) actually 'great'.
Also see:
RPM 1982 Notes on Wine Tasting
Does that help?
