Elevate your wine tasting experience. Using all five senses can help you discover hidden depths in every glass!

Great wine requires a madman to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it.

Salvador Dalí

The wine tasting experience can be a culturally enriching endeavor. You’ll find history inside that bottle. There’s tradition and pride behind that glass. We can’t forget that wine is made by humans, and we’re tasting the literal (fermented) fruit of their labor.

Yes, wine is about having a good time, but if we understand it, our experience tasting it will improve. The good news? It’s a walk in the park! Wine is a joy for the senses. That’s what we say, isn’t it? And why not? We need all our senses to fully enjoy our wine tasting experience. Yes. All of them. And that’s the key.

Let’s go one by one and see how we can improve our enjoyment of wine by using our five senses.

The Sounds That Shape Wine Appreciation

That’s right! I’m beginning with the difficult one. Let’s get it out of the way, first. There’s no sound in wine. I mean, some will tell you that’s why we toast, to hear the clinking glasses. I don’t know if I buy that. There’s better explanations out there[i].

So, what sounds do we associate with wine? Think about the gulps we hear as we pour it from bottle to glass or decanter. Or the swoosh it makes as we swirl it around in our glasses. Well, those are valid, and in a way, the best we’ll get. And what about the sound of a popping sparkling bottle, or the elegant silence when we open it following refined etiquette? Furthermore, there are distinct sounds whether we remove the natural cork out of a bottle or unscrew its cap, and they both set different moods, wouldn’t you agree?

Though muted and often forgotten, sound plays a role in the wine tasting experience. We just need to pay more attention. Dare I say we need to look harder?

How Visual Cues Enhance Your Wine Tasting Experience

Worst. Transition. Ever. Anyway, let’s talk about what you see in the glass.

Don’t get it twisted, this goes beyond red or white. And don’t get cheeky either, I’m not only talking about rosé and orange[ii]. Well, I am talking about all the above, but what we’re looking for are gradients; the shades and intensity of red, for instance.

In the wine tasting experience, wine enthusiasts often use the term ‘eyes‘ to describe the visual aspects, saying things like, ‘On the eyes, this wine is deep ruby, maybe even light purple. It’s opaque, but not completely transparent, and the rim’s width is compact.” As you can see, it’s not all about color.

Opacity relates to the body of the wine. The more you can see through it, as you tilt the glass and hold it against a white background, the lighter its body will be. Opacity can also be an indicator of age. If you have two of the same Cabs, only one is a couple of years old and the second is a decade old, the latter would be more translucent. The rim is another indicator for youth. Wider rims generally indicate older wines, whose color will also change color due to oxidation. They will turn into shades of clay and brown.

Lastly, you can also see wine tears in your glass if you swirl it. Thicker legs mean more alcohol.

The Art of Wine Aromatics

If you’re into wine, you understand the pleasure of sticking your nose in a glass and taking a good sniff or two and savoring the aroma.

Experts try to uncover many of the hundreds of aromatics in wine. The rest of us casuals just smell it because we like the scent. Yeah, we can typically get a few aromatics: some fruit, a little wood or smoke, maybe flowers? But most of us mainly care if the wine smells pleasant. Picking up more aromatics comes with practice. But don’t stress. It’s enough to smell something and know if you like it or not.

 Of course, there’s something else you can smell in wines: defects. Cork taint is the big one here. If your wine smells of wet dog or cardboard, it’s corked. Corked wine is not dangerous, only unpleasant.

The Heart of the Wine Tasting Experience: Flavor

Finally, right? All the senses help enhance the experience, but flavor is the most important one. After all, we pour wine because we like it!

And I must be careful here, because we tend to use both words indistinguishably, but there’s a real linguistic difference between taste and flavor. You’re eating an apple and, unsurprisingly, it “tastes” like an apple. Except, like I said, taste is not the same as flavor. See, taste has to do with the five sensations we feel in our mouth: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami[iii].

In wine, of course, we have both. Wines are (or at least can be) all five. Flavor, on the other hand, is the confirmation of all the aromas we perceived: the fruit, the wood, the smoke. Flavor is an extension of aroma.

So, even if we (yes, I’m including myself) use both terms interchangeably, we really shouldn’t.

How Mouthfeel Completes Your Wine Tasting Experience

You didn’t think I was going to forget about touch, right? Mouthfeel plays an important role in wine tasting. We hold the wine in our mouth, sometimes moving it around, for a while before swallowing, don’t we? We want to feel the heft of the wine. Where does it stand in the scale of light to heavy body?

Then there’s tannins. You know that puckering sensation you get when you drink wine, or tea? Well, those are the tannins. They help wine age and soften with time. I generally don’t prefer wines with a lot of tannins, so I let those age, but you do you. Some people really enjoy young, bold wines.

Temperature: The Sixth Sense

We have more than five senses[iv] but most of them can’t be related to wine. Thermoception, the sense of temperature, is the exception.

Temperature is important in the wine tasting experience. Sometimes the wine will feel hot in our mouth, which has to do with how much alcohol it has. More importantly, temperature comes into play with how cold—or warm—we serve the wine. Colder wines are more closed aromatically and feel more acidic in the mouth. Conversely, if the wine is served too hot, it will feel more tannic and alcoholic.

As you can see, temperature could’ve easily fit as a subsection under the senses of taste or smell. I’ve decided to keep it under touch because we will first perceive it (is it too cold or too hot?) when we touch the wine with our lips.

The Last Drop

Wine is a joy for the senses, and we, even if unconsciously, use all five[v] when tasting wine. Some are a stretch (I’m looking at you, sound), but others, like taste and aroma, are crucial to the experience.

Next time you pour yourself a Pinot Noir, think about how you’re using your senses. Make some time to listen to the sound of uncorking it, look at it thoughtfully, smell and taste it with intention. How did it feel in your mouth? I guarantee the more thought you put in the process, the better your wine tasting experience will be.

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Footnotes

[i] Clinking full glasses will end up mixing the drinks, which was a clever way for nobility un the Middle Ages to ensure that the glasses were not poisoned. There’s another theory I like, which actually has to do with sound, as the noise of the clink warded against evil spirits. Or at least some cultures believed so.

[ii] Rosé wines, by the way, are made by minimizing the skin contact with the juice of red wine varietals. The longer they are together, the redder the color. Orange wines are the same, but with white wine grapes.

[iii] Experts rightfully recognize umami as one of the basic tastes. It’s the savory feeling in broths, mushrooms and cheese.

[iv] Equilibrium (the sense of balance) in another sense, but it would only apply after you’ve had a few.

[v] I know I said there’s more than five. I said it in the section above. But, c’mon! Just let me have this one!

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Cover Image: Use your five senses to enhance your wine tasting experience. Photo by Douglas Lopez