Learn How to Taste Wine and Develop Your Palate

Ardent wine lovers often know their wines to their core. Tasting wines is an age-old art, probably as old as the first wine itself. And today, we have dedicated jobs for experts with a refined sense of taste, smell, and a well-developed palate to document the characteristics of good wines. 

Drinking wine and tasting dozens of them in a single go are absolutely fun, but vastly different activities. Tasting a wine takes serious skills and (almost) a gifted sense of taste and smell. Turns out, the world needs more professionals to pursue the second kind of talent to deliver the finest wines to true enthusiasts - from Wine Connoisseurs and trained Sommeliers. 

If you are keen on developing your prowess for judging wines, and maybe make a rewarding career out of it, you’ve landed at just the right place! 

So, let’s get started with the basics. 

Here are the fundamentals of tasting wine. This is ‘the modus operandi’ behind judging and characterizing any wine.

Learn How to Taste Wine 

It would make sense to create the right environment and be ready with the right apparatus and setting to taste your wine. Here is what you will need;

• Wine Glass: Ideally, you need to have different glasses for the red and white wines. The glasses must be thoroughly cleaned, and must have enough room to swirl the wine. 
• A white cloth or white paper sheet.
• A room with neutral light setting or outdoors with natural light.
• Avoid any space with distracting smells like that of cooking, perfumes, flowers, etc. 
• Wine: Ideally at suitable temperatures - 7-10 degree celsius for white wines and 12-18 degree celsius for red wines. 

Now comes the fun part that will reveal the true character and personality of your wine. Here is the fundamental methodology of tasting it.

Start by looking

Train yourself (gradually, of course!) to execute this step quickly. In the neutral light setting, the wine will reveal its true color and other properties like opacity (how transparent it is?) and viscosity (how easily it flows?). Take a close look and list out the visual characteristics of the wine in your head. For e.g., A Rose Red wine with high transparency and water-like viscosity. 

Judge the aroma

Do you notice any fruit scents? Begin with broad categories. Identify if the scents belong to citrus, orchard, or tropical groups for white wines. For reds, categorize them as red, blue, or black fruits. Avoid getting bogged down by overly specific scents or hunting for a single aroma, as this approach often ends in frustration. 

You can generally sort wine aromas into three main types:

Primary Aromas stem directly from the grape. They encompass fruit, herb, and floral scents.

Secondary Aromas arise during the winemaking process. They're often yeast-based and more apparent in white wines, including smells like cheese crust, nutshell (think almonds, peanuts), or even sour beer.

Tertiary Aromas develop through aging in the bottle or possibly in oak barrels. These smells are usually savory - think toasted nuts, spices used in baking, vanilla, fallen leaves, aged tobacco, well-worn leather, cedar wood, and sometimes coconut.

Tasting the wine

• Taste: The human tongue can detect salty, sour, sweet, or bitter. All wines will have some sourness because grapes inherently have some acidity. This varies with the grape type and climate. Some white table wines have a small portion of their grape sugar and sweetness. You can’t ever smell sweetness since only your tongue can detect it. Moreover, only a handful of wines taste salty. But, they do exist.
• Texture: If you notice with patience, you will feel your tongue perceiving the texture of the wine - i.e. the tactile sensation of the liquid on the tongue. This is majorly due to Ethanol which gives wine texture because it is “richer” than water. We can also detect tannins with our tongue, which are that sandpaper or tongue-depressor drying sensation in the reds.
• Length: This is a cool factor and worth showing off during your next party. The taste of wines will also vary with time. There is the beginning of the palate, mid-palate, and end-palate. Depending upon how long it takes for the wine's taste to fade away, you will categorize it as such.  

Overall personality of the wine

This would be the final step in your wine tasting journey and your concluding remarks. You should ask yourself questions like - was the wine too tannin (originating from the phenolic compounds in wine)? Was it too alcoholic or acidic? Did the wine make a great impression on your taste palate or was it too ordinary? Your conclusion should be based on your authentic judgment. 

With enough practice (or even a certification course), you will be able to know your wine as soon as it pours and swirls into the glass. 

Wine tasting as a career

Tasting wines accounts for a multitude of factors and sensory skills. What if you get good enough at this and want to make a career out of it? Well, we say it is hot and you are thinking right. 

There are multiple job roles associated with wine making, tasting and serving. However, roles of Wine Connoisseur and Sommelier stand out if you are a keen taster. In India, wine tasters, or sommeliers, can start earning between INR 10,000–20,000 per month, and can earn up to INR 50,000 per month after a few years of experience. Wine tasters with more experience and who work with high-end establishments can earn over INR 50,000 per month. Wine tasters who work abroad or have experience with foreign clientele can earn much higher salaries, ranging from INR 1–1.5 lakh per month.

The salary range for wine tasters varies depending on factors like experience, qualifications, job role, and location. For example, sommeliers certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers and some other wine educational organizations are more often called sommeliers.

Several organizations in India provide wine-tasting certification courses, such as the Indian Wine Academy, Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), and International Sommelier Guild (ISG).

Do you think this career is suitable for you? We hope it gave you enough information to set the sails for your career as a wine tasting professional.

Stay tuned, stay awesome!