Finally, if a wine shows signs that it will improve with age that is a certain sign of higher quality. 

This is because most wines, even the quality levels we cover in this book, are meant to be drunk within a year or two of release and so truly age worthy wines like great Bordeaux’s or Rhones tend to be more expensive and represents only a small proportion of those you are likely to taste. As you become more experienced a taster however you will identify structural elements that will hint at this type of quality criteria. A balanced wine with good fruit concentration with an indications of the use of oak, solid tannin and acidity all support quality wines that will age past the 2 years.

A professional can successfully complete the whole thing in 3-4 minutes and, as serious wine enthusiasts, this is what we must aspire to. 

If you’re new to the process, practice tastings in private until you nail the routine, and this will give you the confidence needed to perform in public. The routine is expected of you at a tasting amongst other enthusiasts or professionals however you may be a little self-conscious performing even part of this whole ritual in public at first. Get over it. What might seem like wine snobbery to many will become second nature to you very quickly and before you know it being the designated taster in the restaurant will be something you look forward to despite the occasional ribbing.

Each stage of the wine prescribed tasting process outlined below provides clues as to its quality and style, the grape varieties used, where the wine was made and its age. This may all seem a little implausible, but by using a process of deduction based upon its appearance, aromas and taste it is possible to accurately assess most wines after the necessary level of study and practice has been undertaken. 

For the best and most consistent results at home you’ll want to invest in an ISO glass specifically designed for the purpose of tasting. This is a small 5 ounce glass used by educational and trade organisations that present the wine in an optimal way for aromas and flavour capture. They are also inexpensive and readily available. In the event you do not have access to a tasting glass simply ensure that you have a good quality plain glass that has a generous bowl that tapers to the rim. This will allow for vigorous swirling and compress the vapours into a narrow aperture for your nose. 

Using the Tasting Script from the Secret Cellar page, open a wine and analyse according to the following segments. You’ll also find a completed script to help you visualise what it may look like when completed.

What a wine looks like in the glass reveals a surprising amount of information to the trained eye. The colour, its hue and intensity will give you the first hints to the style and quality of the wine, where it may have come from and what the likely grape variety is and even its age. The clarity of the wine will tell you a great deal about its overall condition, and the legs or tears that form around the inside of the glass after swirling can suggest high alcohol or even high sugar levels.

Bright natural light is ideal for judging the appearance of a wine and so when indoors do your best to replicate that by having a well-lit room and a white cloth or sheet of paper that will reflect it through the wine as you hold the glass over it. 

Start by pouring a small amount of wine into a clean plain glass and hold it away from you at an angle of 45º at about six inches above the well illuminated, white background.

The first thing to look for is the condition of the wine. If the wine is clear and free from any particles suspended in it then it is in good condition, if the wine is hazy then it probably has one of the faults described below and should be rejected. 

You may however find small pieces of cork floating in the wine. This can happen if the corkscrew penetrates through the entire cork and pieces break inside the bottle. While annoying, they do not affect the condition of the wine and can easily be removed. Another harmless but visible anomaly are small crystals that settle at the bottom of the glass when poured. Mostly in white wines these are actually small tartrate crystals – or more lovingly, “wine diamonds” and are formed from tartaric acid which is naturally occurring in all wines and provides structure, balance, and flavour. Tartaric acid is one of three main acids found in wine grapes alongside malic, and citric acids.

The small mud like pieces evident in red wines and particularly Port wines, are simply red tartrate crystals and some pigmented tannins that are the result of phenolic polymerisation as the wine ages. This is the natural sediment of wines designed for aging ( both white and red) and while unpleasant to look at, is not harmful and should be removed prior to pouring by careful decanting.

The intensity of the wine, or how much colour it has, is categorised as pale, medium or deep and is a key indicator of the style. With the glass still at 45 degrees judge how far the colour pigmentation extends from the deep core to the outer rim. The further it extends out, the deeper the wine. A trick for reds is to look directly down on an upright glass placed on the table over a white backdrop. If you can easily see the stem where it meets the bowl of the glass then the wine is light; only just make it out medium and if not at all the wine is deep. 

Intensity gives an early clue as to the grape variety, the region of origin and the style of the wine. For example, you’ll learn that a Pinot Blanc is lighter than a Semillon or an oaked, warm climate Chardonnay. The contrast between a deep ruby Cabernet Sauvignon and a pale red Pinot Noir will not only be obvious but you’ll know immediately what they may be in a blind tasting.

Once you’re aware that white wines turn gold and even brown over time, a white of any age is easily identified. This is not necessarily denoting a fault in the wine so long as it is of a high quality and designed to age. Even so its characteristics will certainly have changed. 

Once you’re familiar with the colour permutations of the major grape varieties you will recognise them immediately in your glass and form the basis of your deductive tasting process.  

Because all wines are clearly red, white, or rose, of you, you automatically start the deductive process by eliminates half the wines you even need to consider. 

Within the red, white and rose general categories however it’s important to note the hue or gradation, tint of the colour. These colour variations or the hues can be best seen as you hold the glass at an angle and the depth of liquid, and therefore its intensity, varies from the core where it is deepest, to the rim where it is thinnest. For white wines assess its colour at the core, but for reds the rim is a better indicator of colour.

The colour range for whites is lemon-green, lemon, gold, amber and brown with the vast majority being lemon. An oaked Californian Chardonnay closer to gold due to its warm climate and ripe fruit, whereas a Burgundy Chablis and its cold climate more austere minerality can be identified by a green tinge at the rim. 

Most red wines in their youth will be  ruby with several examples of new world reds and some Beaujolais being purple. Older, higher quality reds will develop garnet, tawny or even brown tones. A hint of purple at the rim would indicate that the wine is young and almost certainly new world whilst ruby wines are more likely to have aged in oak at least for a short period during the winemaking process and would typically be old world.

You will also observe streams of liquid flowing down the inside of the glass after the wine has been swirled. Known as legs or tears the rate at which they flow depends upon the level of viscosity in the wine as a result of either alcohol or sugar levels. Sweeter and higher alcohol wines are more viscous and have thicker, more persistent legs.  

Technically the single most important attribute of a wine. Otherwise known as aroma (in young wines) that develop into a bouquet (in older wines) it is the most acute human tasting instrument with 80% of what we taste actually generated through our nose and its complex apparatus. If you need proof, just hold your nose and try tasting a lemon!  

To take full advantage of this apparatus hold the glass by the stem, swirl vigorously in order to release the aromas from the wine and immediately insert your nose deep into the glass. Some benefit most from a single, deep inhalation while others take several short sniffs (just like a dog would) it doesn’t matter, so long as you can smell the wine as much as possible. Personally, I find that closing my eyes, focussing on the aromas  and blanking out every other sensation enables me to concentrate on analysing the constituent smells. One other thing, first impressions are usually correct.

Start by determining whether the wine is in good condition. If you do not smell anything a little “off” then it’s probably fine and you can move on to analyse it. In the event you encounter something that doesn’t smell quite right then it could be one of several faults occasionally found in wine. For example, if there is a distinctive smell of damp cardboard or a musty basement, then the cork is probably contaminated with a fungus called trichloroanisole (TCA) otherwise known as “cork taint.” Hence the term “corked.” Whilst not harmful it makes the wine unpleasant and dull as inhibits the fruit flavours in the wine.

Sometimes these smells can blow off so give it a minute. Other noticeable smells that denote a wine out of condition include an acrid smell of recently extinguished matches or a stinky odour of rotten eggs or boiled cabbage. This occurs when the wine has suffered from what’s called reduction, or lack of any oxygen at all during the winemaking process. 

If a wine is too old and past its best or has been stored incorrectly, usually in a warm kitchen or a restaurant manager’s office it will smell flat, or even jammy. Oxygen may be life sustaining to us, not so much for wine. If you detect the smell of vinegar or nail polish remover then the wine is suffering from volatile acidity when exposed to oxygen. Oxidation can take place anywhere from the winery to when you open the bottle and is most noticeable in the colour of the wine. Reds become brick coloured and whites deep golden. If the wine tastes lifeless, flat and stale then it has been oxidised. And one more favourite is a fault called “Brett” where the yeast reveals itself in unpleasant animal, sticking plaster, sweat, leathery, aromas.

But don’t panic. These days such faults are rare occurrences but do not be afraid to send a bottle back or return a bottle, or even a glass of wine displaying any of these characteristics. Be particularly vigilante however when buying wine by the glass. A wine that has been open too long lacks freshness and at best smells flat and uninteresting. This is an expensive way of buying wine so don’t settle for substandard product. 

Aromas are the simple, fruity smells that a young wine gives off. Not to be confused with the often misused term bouquet which is only present in older wines that have developed complex, multi layered tertiary characteristics through aging. For example, a young Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon will display bold black fruit characteristics but not the dried fruit, cedar, leather, forest floor of a 15 year old Bordeaux even though it is made essentially from the same grape blends.

The ease with which you can smell anything in the glass depends upon the intensity of the aromas. These can be anything from being quite difficult to detect at all (light), through to those assaulting your nose (pronounced) and much easier to identify. In general the aroma intensity is not a good indicator of quality in and of itself, after all a cheap wine will be designed  to burst with fruity aromas, however a wine displaying secondary, and certainly tertiary characteristics, is almost certainly of a high quality. The most effective method of identifying aromas and flavours is to is to systematically “visualise” each of the possible fruits outlined below as you smell the wine. When visualising strawberry for instance, you will almost certainly get a matching aroma if you were tasting a Pinot Noir and similarly look out for the signature aromas of individual grape varieties as summarised in the list below. Burnt rubber comes to mind for a Rhone Syrah for example. With a red wines the first decision is whether it is a red fruit like strawberry or black fruit like blackberry that dominates. Once you decide on one or the other then the other primary fruits cascade from that. There are instances where you may detect both red and black grapes which is fine so long as you can identify them confidently. If you smell it then it is probably there. With white wines it is more difficult but try and determine if there are floral, honeyed or herbaceous notes which will narrow the options to aromatic grape varieties like Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat, Viognier or Gewürztraminer. 

Because our sense of smell contributes 80% to what we taste, identifying aromas is key to our ability to assess a wines quality and so I have provided a list of the primary and secondary aromas you can expect to find in the price range we’re analysing. 

Finally, you get to taste the wine. If you plan to attend organised tastings where you’ll be exposed to a lot of wine, you may want to learn to spit the wine out after tasting. This will certainly avoid inebriation, but this is a technique that requires more practice given the limited exposure your taste buds have to a wine that is not swallowed. Irrespective, as you taste the wine you are going to confirm the aromas that you’ve already identified from your nose because, as we now know, 80% of taste is actually what we smell.

In addition however you will now discover things you cannot smell and only taste. These are sweet, sour and bitter or in wine terms sweet, acidic or tannic. Again, this requires focus and concentration so take a good mouthful of the wine and swill it into every part of your mouth. In order to extract as much taste as possible aerate the wine in your mouth by sucking air over the wine on your tongue before swallowing, paying special attention to how long those flavours linger in your mouth. This is a particularly important sign of quality. The longer the better.

If you can only taste one style of fruit, the wine is simple whereas if you additionally detect some of the following elements then the wine is complex which also indicates a higher quality.

• Sweetness – detected on the tip of the tongue. Most light wines are called dry which means that there is actually little or no sugar in them at all. The presence of a tiny amount of sugar is off dry and it’s not until you get to medium dry or medium sweet that sugar is detectable at all. Sweet dessert wines are where sugar is the dominant characteristic. Be aware that certain fruity wines can taste sweet but are actually dry.
• Acidity – detected at the sides of the tongue in the lower glands. The more your mouth waters the higher the acidity. With low acidity the wine will feel flabby whilst high acidity tastes mouth wateringly fresh and vibrant. Compare to the effect that lemon juice has on your palate.
• Tannin – detected on the gums above your front teeth. They cause your mouth to dry and taste like a used teabag. There are levels of tannin from the teeth wrenching astringent tannins of a young Chianti or Bordeaux to the softer tannins of a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.
• Alcohol – detected in the back of the throat as you inhale with your mouth open. The higher the alcohol content the more intense the burning/warming sensation. Alcohol contributes to the texture and body of the wine and runs anywhere from a sweet wine at 9% alcohol by (abv) through to 15% or 16% abv in a bold, dry red. An average white will be 12.5% abv and red 13.5%.

In general the higher the alcohol content the fuller the body of the wine.

This may all seem a little technical given that we’re talking about a beverage, but these are the structural components in wine around which quality is most clearly assessed.

The balance between fruit and sugar on one side and acid and tannin on the other is a key indicator of just how good the wine is and so it’s worth a few minutes to understand. It is this balance and the integration of these components into the overall taste that creates the textural impression of the wine in your mouth.

Too little fruit or sugar and the wine will feel steely and thin, too little acid and or tannin creates a flabby, unstructured mouthfeel. Where none of the elements dominates then the wine is said to be balanced, if the overwhelming impression is of say a grippy dry tannin, then it will be out of balance. Just to complicate matters however, be aware that an age worthy wine will certainly taste out of balance when young. This is because the elements required for long aging, particularly tannin and acidity will stand out until the wine has developed in bottle and they have fully integrated into the wine, a process that can take decades.

Body is a tasting term that refers to the weight of a wine on the palate ranging from light to medium, to full bodied. The weight of the mouthfeel is determined by several factors that you will need to consider as you taste the wine. The grape variety, alcohol, tannin, sugar and extract levels of the fruit all contribute to a wines body as does the climate which reflects the ripeness of the grape and hence its origins. A full bodied wine will usually come from warm climate, although a warm vintage in a cool climate can occasionally have the same effect.  and one way to calibrate body is to compare the mouthfeel of fat free milk compared to 2% and then full fat. The depth of body in a wine has little relationship to quality however the intensity, or the impression of how flavoursome a wine is on the palate, however does. A light Pinot Noir can be every bit as flavourful as a full bodied Malbec because the easily distinguishable flavours are a good indicator that quality fruit has been used and that the producer has taken care to ensure its presence in the wine.