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Wine glasses may be one of the most overlooked and misunderstood pieces of wine “stuff.” I see it all the time in restaurants when I order wine. The waiter brings me some small wine glass filled up almost to the top. It’s enough to drive a wine enthusiast crazy. Fortunately, there are plenty of restaurants that understand proper wine glasses and are not afraid to use them.

Budding wine enthusiasts need to understand what a good wine glass is as well, and they need to use them. As mentioned in an earlier lesson, almost all of what we perceive as flavors in wine are really the result of aromas we detect. Because aromas are central to the wine experience, it will help you greatly if you use a wine glass that focuses those aromas for you.

The best wine glass is one that features a good size tulip-shaped bowl (that’s what we call the part above the stem). You want it to be good sized so that you can pour four or five ounces of wine yet still have plenty of room to swirl the wine. (This is the primary fault that so many restaurant wine glasses have–the bowl is too small and filled too high. Any swirling usually ends up on me or my neighbor wearing the wine instead of me drinking it.)

The tulip-shape of the bowl is the other important characteristic: it directs the aromas up into an area just above and below the rim of the glass. Wine glasses without a tulip-shaped bowl scatter the aromas so they are harder to detect.

My own preference for wine glasses comes in the form of the Riedel Overture Bordeaux Magnum glass. [Disclosure: That link is an affiliate link to the glass at Amazon.com.] Although I have a variety of Riedel varietal-specific wine glasses (Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling/Chianti, Syrah, ice wine, Champagne flutes), I find that this particular wine glass has the right size and shape for most purposes. As I mention on the Marketplace page, there’s a reason so many wine tasting rooms use these glasses as their glassware.

Do you need to buy these specific wine glasses? No, definitely not. For some people they are a little pricey. Others may prefer to look at and hold the glasses in hand before making a buying decision. For folks in the U.S., you can find many Riedel glasses at Target Stores, which gives you a chance to check them out. There are also glasses made by Spiegelau (which is now owned by Riedel) and many other brands.

The name on the box of wine glasses is not as important as the size and shape. While the Riedel “O” and similar stemless wine glasses are trendy, I do not recommend them. You really want to keep your fingers and hand off of the bowl–the heat from your hand will transfer to the wine, and that can affect the taste of the wine. Thus, a stemmed glass is always preferable.

Where else can you buy wine glasses? The Wine Enthusiast catalog has an extensive selection of glassware. How easily they can ship outside the US is a good question. IWA also has a nice selection, but again they may be limited to shipping in the United States. If anyone outside the US has suggestions for good glassware sellers, please leave a note in the comments!

Your Homework: If you do not already have one, borrow a proper wine glass from someone. Pick up a bottle of Merlot or Pinot Noir (or any other wine for that matter) and pour a few ounces into the wine glass. Before you swirl, sniff, and sip, take a water glass with straight or flared sides (you can even use a jelly or mason jar) and pour roughly the same amount of wine into it. Swirl, sniff, and taste the wine from each glass. Do you notice a difference? How would you describe the difference between the two?

To turn in your homework, leave your observations and data on the wine as a comment to this post or over at our Facebook page.

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More Wine For Newbies 101

Lesson 4–Evaluating wine, part 2
Lesson 3–Evaluating wine, part 1
Lesson 2–Learning to taste wine
Lesson 1–Is learning about wine difficult?

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In lesson 3, we looked at one way to evaluate a wine. Of course, the most important evaluation is the simple question of whether you like the wine. A more descriptive evaluation, however, helps you explain why you liked a wine–or didn’t like it. As I’ve said many times before, being able to describe a wine also helps you find more wines that you like. Being able to walk into a wine shop and say, “I really like such-and-such. It was a nice, flavorful wine, it didn’t completely dry my mouth out, and it had good aromas. Do you have anything similar?” can really help you find more wines to try.

As time goes on, however, it can become difficult to remember the details about a wine. Writing a tasting note can be a good tactic to help you remember a wine. If you can keep your tasting notes in one place, it’s even better because you can look back through them to better trigger your recollection. As I’ve mentioned before, I really like the DeLong Wine Tasting Note form. I’d encourage you to download it now.

One of the things I like about this form is that you can circle some of the descriptors. There is also enough space to write down things like aromas and flavors. To me, this helps take away some of the head-scratching I used to do when trying to write a tasting note.

Recently, I received an email from Steve DeLong, inviting me to receive a review copy of his company’s Wine Tasting Notebook [affiliate link]. I indicated I’d be happy to review it and leave my thoughts at Amazon.com. Before I go further, I want to make this clear: the following comments are about a product that I was given to review. As I mentioned above, I am a fan of the DeLong Wine Tasting Note form and was well before I received the Wine Tasting Notebook. The fact I received this for free has had no influence on my rave review of this product.

Inside this tasting notebook are 56 pages of blank DeLong Wine Tasting Note forms (single forms, not the three-form version you find in the PDF file). Now, for some people, this feature alone might make the product worth the nominal cost. But in my opinion, what sends this notebook over the top is the little extra DeLong includes–and that you can’t get for free on the web site (unless I’ve missed it somewhere).

In a back pocket of the notebook you will find a four-fold, double sided, sort of laminated sheet. On one side is a detailed (and I mean detailed!) explanation of how to really write a tasting note using the form found in the notebook. That’s nice, but the real treasure is on the other side. There is a whole sheet full of wine tasting terms, including aromas and flavors broken down into categories, like floral, herbal, vegetal, etc. This sheet is like the Wine Aroma Wheel but in a much more portable form. (The aroma wheel is very light, but it’s a laminated circle, so it may not fit easily into a pocket unless you fold it up.) Over fifty tasting note forms plus a good reference for wine descriptors, all for less than 10 US dollars.

Had I known about this notebook earlier, I would have been buying them up regularly. Heck, I would have urged my IU South Bend students to buy one and use it in their studies. While I’m glad to have received a free sample, I will be purchasing these in the future. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

If you’re not inclined to purchase this tool, you can download a free paper aroma card at Vinography. You print it out, fold it up as shown, and you have a business card-sized aroma reference. One nice thing about Vinography’s aroma card is that besides being free, it is available in several languages: Japanese, German, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian, and English. Aromas a grouped together in categories, although the categories are not labeled. Heck, even if you purchase the DeLong notebook, download this card and tuck it in the back of the notebook. You can never have too many references when looking for just the right descriptor.

Your Homework Assignment: This assignment is a two-part assignment. Last time, I assigned you the task of picking up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and seeing if you could describe it using some basic descriptors. I forgot to encourage you to leave your description as a comment to that post or over at the Wine For Newbies Facebook page. So, the first part of your assignment is to put your tasting note either as a comment to the previous post or on the Facebook site.

The second part of your assignment is to download the DeLong Tasting Note Form and go out to pick up a bottle of Chardonnay from anywhere but California. Using the tasting note form, write up a tasting note, and then report on your note in a comment here or at the Facebook page.

If you want extra credit, compare and contrast the Sauvignon Blanc with the Chardonnay.

Audio Only

More Wine For Newbies 101

Lesson 3–Evaluating wine, part 1
Lesson 2–Learning to taste wine
Lesson 1–Is learning about wine difficult?

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Anyone who has been to a wine tasting knows that people don’t drink wine like any other beverage. There is plenty of swirling, sniffing, looking at the wine against white backgrounds, and discussion of tannins, fruits, leather, and a zillion other aromas. It is definitely unique to wine. When is the last time you swirled and sniffed your Dr. Pepper?

Why bother with all of this? It’s not like we need to sniff wine to make sure it isn’t spoiled or poison.

Why bother with it indeed?

The best answer I can come up with is that wine is unlike other beverages, and it is unlike many foods. Wine is something different. It is almost analogous to art: we can stand and look at a Picasso, but by learning more about what Picasso was trying to do, we can better appreciate the art itself.

With wine, we’re not merely drinking it. We’re looking at what the wine is like, and we get an idea of what the winemaker was trying to accomplish. In addition, by learning how to taste wines as others do, we can talk with them about wines using common vocabulary. Otherwise, it would be like me asking you how to make a chocolate cake and you giving me the Pythagorean Theorem. If we don’t have a common vocabulary, wine drinkers end up talking past each other.

At this point, some of you may be saying, “Wait a minute. We don’t do that with other foods. This is all too much.”

Actually, we definitely do this sort of thing with other foods. Have you ever described a steak as “tender”? Or a chocolate chip cookie as “chewy”? We have common vocabularies with other foods. If I tell you my hamburger is over-done, you know exactly what I mean. It has been cooked to within an inch of any recognition, is not juicy at all, and needs to be drowned in ketchup just to seem like it is not completely dry.

With wine, we use vocabulary to describe its color, its aromas, and its tastes. Why? So we can describe the wine to someone else–for example, someone might ask you what you like about a wine you just raved about. Having some common descriptors helps that person understand why you were raving about the wine. In addition, when someone else describes a wine, we have a better sense of what the person is saying.

So–how exactly do you “taste” a wine?

There are “Five S-es” to know: See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, and Swallow/Spit

First, you See the wine. What does its color look like? Is it dense and full of color? That can be a good sign. Is it pale or watery? That could be a bad sign. Is the color in alignment with the age of the wine? Older wines move toward the brown end of the color spectrum. Young red wines will appear purplish before moving to a brick color. Young white wines will be yellow or maybe even greenish before moving toward gold and then brown.

If you have a young wine (meaning from a very recent vintage) and it appears to be brown, the odds are the wine has spoiled or otherwise been damaged. Take the bottle back to the seller for a replacement or a refund.

Also, you want to look at the wine to see if it is clear. If the wine is cloudy, it may be a sign the wine has a defect in it.

The second thing you do is Swirl the wine. Why swirl it? We swirl wine because we want to release the aromas that are locked in the wine itself. Swirling the wine is similar to peeling the skin off of an orange–the breaking of molecules allows aromas to move upward in the glass and then we can smell them.

Swirling can take a little practice. As the saying goes, it’s all in the wrist. But, many beginning wine drinkers find it helpful to leave the glass on the table and move the base around in a circle to get the swirling going. Heck, even experienced wine drinkers do this on occasion.

If you ever observe someone swirling their water at a table, the odds are they are a wine drinker. Once you get in the habit of swirling wine, you end up swirling just about everything that you drink.

The third step is to Sniff the wine. For some people, this is the most important step. What you’re doing here is trying to pick out the aromas in the wine. Why? Well, the answer is rather simple: if you can’t smell a wine, you can’t taste it.

Think back to your basic health or science class. The tongue may have thousands upon thousands of taste buds, but it only detects five “flavors”: salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and “savory”. (This last one was discovered by Japanese researchers in the 1990s.) There are no parts of the tongue that detect chocolate, honey, pepper, or any other flavors. When our brain tells us “this tastes like salsa,” it is really our sense of smell at work. The nasal passages are connected with the mouth, and the aroma molecules from our food go up and register in our olfactory receptors. So, when you have a terrible cold and your head is congested, this is why everything tastes bland. When your sense of smell is not working, your sense of taste is not working either.

The fourth step is to Sip the wine. Now you’re looking not only for flavors (that probably matched the aromas you detected), but you’re assessing the body of the wine. How does it feel in the mouth? Light, like skim milk, or heavy, like cream? Does it seem acidic, like grapefruit juice, or does it feel flat, like an old cola drink? Does the wine have lots of flavors immediately, in the middle of your taste, and as you get ready to swallow it? Or does the wine’s flavors disappear after you first detect them?

A good wine will have plenty of flavor from the first moment it hits your tongue until the wine leaves your mouth. A good wine will also not have anything that dominates. Too much alcohol will make the wine feel like it is burning your mouth a bit. Too little alcohol will leave the wine feeling flabby. Too much acid will make a wine seem sharp, while too little will leave it feeling flat. A wine with everything in balance is often referred to as having good structure.

The fifth and final step is to Swallow or Spit. You may see a number of people at wine tastings spitting the wine out into a bucket or other receptacle. This is not because the wine was bad. Rather, it is because the taster did not want to ingest the alcohol in the wine. Someone who is going to taste many wines in a relatively short period of time is probably going to spit the wines out so she doesn’t become inebriated.

Whether you spit the wine out or swallow it, what you want to look for is whether the flavors continue on in your mouth for a long time. Three seconds is considered a short finish. Seven to ten seconds is considered a long finish. Generally speaking, wine aficionados prefer wines with longer finishes.

The casual wine drinker will probably be more interested in the aromas and flavors than anything else, which is perfectly fine. A casual wine drinker is probably not interested in scoring the wine or writing a detailed tasting note. The wine enthusiast, on the other hand, is likely to note the color, spend a little while swirling and sniffing, and then taking a number of sips before making any declarations about the wine. The final goal for the enthusiast and the casual drinker is to find wines that are enjoyable. Having an idea what to look for makes the search for those wines part of the fun to be found in the wine world.

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