Wine Tasting 101: How to Actually Taste the Wine

The Method

The Four Steps: Look, Swirl, Smell, Sip

Wine tasting is taught badly. Sommeliers make it sound like a secret language, and most guides lead with the wrong thing - the colour, the viscosity, the legs on the glass. None of that matters if you cannot tell whether you actually like the wine. The four-step method below is the only one you need. It is what winemakers themselves use at the bench, and it is what cellar door staff are taught in their first week. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds per wine.

Step 1: Look

Tilt the glass against a white surface - a napkin, a tablecloth, the sky. You are not judging the wine. You are reading two things: the colour and the clarity. Colour tells you about age and grape variety. A pale lemon chardonnay is young and cool-climate. A deep gold chardonnay has seen oak or bottle age. A pale ruby pinot noir is one thing; a brick-garnet pinot is another. Clarity tells you whether the wine is sound. Cloudiness in a white can be intentional (unfiltered) or a fault. Cloudiness in a red, post-bottle, is usually sediment - not a problem.

Step 2: Swirl

Put the glass on the table and roll it in a small circle for two or three seconds. This is not showing off. Swirling agitates the wine and releases volatile aromatic compounds - the things you smell. Without swirling, you only get the top notes. With swirling, you get the full profile: primary fruit, secondary oak, tertiary character from age, and any flaws. The faster the legs fall back into the glass, the higher the alcohol. That is the one useful thing legs tell you.

Step 3: Smell

Put your nose into the glass and take a short, sharp sniff. Then a longer, slower one. You are looking for three categories: fruit, oak/structure, and faults. Fruit descriptors are the easiest - citrus, stone fruit, red berry, black fruit. Oak descriptors are vanilla, toast, smoke, coconut (new American oak). Faults are wet cardboard (cork taint), nail polish remover (volatile acidity), or flat sherry-like oxidation. If a wine smells wrong, trust your nose and ask the cellar door staff. Cork taint affects about 3% of bottled wine. They will swap it.

Step 4: Sip

Take a small sip and hold the wine in your mouth for 5-10 seconds. You are assessing four things: body, tannin, acidity, and finish. Body is the weight - water, milk, or cream. Tannin is the drying sensation on your gums (red wine only). Acidity is the salivation at the sides of your tongue - the more you salivate, the higher the acid. Finish is how long the flavour lasts after you swallow. A 30-second finish is excellent. A 5-second finish is forgettable.

Spitting Is Professional

Spitting is not rude. Spitting is professional. If you swallow every pour across five cellar doors you will be drunk by 2 PM and remember none of the afternoon. Every winery provides a spittoon - usually a stainless steel bucket or a purpose-built ceramic bowl on the tasting bench. Use it. The cellar door staff will not be offended. The winemaker will respect you. And your afternoon will be a tasting flight instead of a blur.

If you would rather not drive yourself between cellar doors, the simplest way to put the four-step method into practice is a guided

Barossa Valley hop-on hop-off wine tour from Adelaide

. The bus loops between eight to ten cellar doors and lets you spend as long as you like at each, which is the only format that actually lets you use the thirty-second-pause-sip-look technique without rushing.