Palate Training

Becoming a good wine taster takes time. After learning the correct technique, it takes lots of tasting practice to improve. Like learning to play a musical instrument…the only way to get better is practice. Exercises to improve your sensitivity to the components of sweet, sour and bitter (like tannins in red wine) can help. Get 5 glasses, numbered on the bottom from 1-5 so you can’t see them. Fill with water and, for sweetness, mix in sugar in varying amounts, 1 being the least sweet, 5 the most. Have someone mix them up and by tasting, place them in order of least sweet to most. For sourness, use lemon juice. For bitterness try a tea bag making varying strengths of tea. These simple exercises will definitely help train your palate. 

Noble Rot

Noble Rot or botrytis is a fungus that eats out the pulp of the grape concentrating the sugar and acid resulting in gloriously rich, sweet wines. Ideal conditions for its growth are hot hazy mornings where the haze lifts and intense sunshine prevails. Certain wine regions of the world have this climatic condition all the time and it’s what makes their wines what they are. Sauternes and Barzac in Bordeaux, France and TokayAszu in northeast Hungary are prime examples. Other parts of the world get it on and off. It’s so sporadic that it can attack certain vineyards and not others. Sometimes one part of a single vineyard or some individual vines within a vineyard are affected. Even parts of a single vine will get it and not other parts. It’s fascinating.

Same Grape/Different Regions

In my experience, one of the best and most educational formats for a wine tasting is to do a single, varietal tasting of international selections. In other words, choose a single grape variety like Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc and assemble samples from different wine regions and countries around the world. This is a fabulous way to see how a specific varietal manifests itself when grown and produced in different environments as affected by its “terroir” (heat, soil composition, rainfall, sunshine, topography, etc.) which defines what the finished wine will be like. You’ll also get to see how different winemaking styles play a part in the resulting wine. It’s a real eye-opener.

Tasting Notes

If you’re into wine, you should always make notes when tasting numerous samples. Taste a few wines and it’s easy to remember what you’ve tasted or the details of a specific one, but when you get up to hundreds and thousands, like myself, it’s impossible. Sure, you might remember the great ones and the extremely lousy ones, but everything else becomes an homogenous mess in the middle. Documenting your tasting results helps you in your recall and learning. If asked about a specific wine, you can always go back and consult your notes for details. It’s also a great way to learn how a specific wine tastes over time if you taste it again at different stages of its evolution. Also great for comparing different bottles of the same!