1. To Spit or Swallow

This is the epic question that no doubt most wine lovers struggle with when it comes to tastings. While wine is pleasureable to drink, when it comes to evaluating wine in a formal tasting, my opinion is that you need to spit and yes, there’s a technique to avoid it dribbling down your chin.

Let’s consider the following. Say you’re invited to an iconic wine tasting, like one recently at the Ritz Santiago. With 50-odd top wines on hand, if you don’t spit, by the time you try number 50 you’ll probably have consumed a bottle (in sips) and be a staggering, wasted mess.

Beyond the occupational hazard of alcohol for us wine professionals, I also think that when you drink a wine you tend to make a bee line down the hatch. That is, you don’t swish, swirl and move the wine around in your mouth. So much of wine tasting is not just about the taste. You want to feel the wine. That’s right, wine has a texture just like food that is found in its body and tannins. How can you feel it if you’re essentially doing “shots”?

Just spit—and then have a glass at lunch.

2. Café, no way:

OMG, if I can share THREE things that you do not want to have within an hour of tasting wine, they are the following: orange juice, toothpaste/mints, and coffee. Want to have the most rank, off flavor in your mouth? No, the wine doesn’t have a problem, your palate does.

What’s the commonality of these? In the case of OJ and coffee, they are very acid and will take your tastebuds in another direction far, far away from neutral. You need your palate to be balanced and at “zero” when you start tasting. Coffee and Malbec? Maybe in some barrel aromas but that’s it!

In the case of toothpaste and mints, this is easy to avoid. Save it for later. Now some people who are obsessed with that minty fresh breath (err, Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm springs to mind) may not dig this but seriously, just deal. Brush your teeth immediately when you wake up or wait until after the tasting. Anyways, your teeth are going to turn a super sexy black hue (perfect for photo opps), like you’ve made out with a pint of blackberries. Then brush away.

3. Crackers & Water:

If you’re setting up a tasting at home with your wine buddies, club, or just wanting to jump around between varietals in a non-food setting, these are your allies. Think about it…aren’t an albariño and a Cabernet Franc opposite ends of the flavor and tannin spectrum? How are you going to pull that one off?

Crackers. Not the flavored, processed, salty Triscuit-variety. Water crackers. Bland. Boring. Whatever. Their purpose is to clean out your palate. Neutralize your tastebuds so those big tannins, or acidity, comes back to zero.

Another tip to keep in mind when tasting wines. Spit your water before drinking.I know, I know, “oh gross Liz”.

Well, let me share with you how I learned this one the hard way. A couple years ago at a big tasting in Mendoza we plowed through about 40 wines in 3 hours. Not for the faint of heart. Thinking I was being Ms. Super Healthy and spitting everything, little did I know that for every sip of water before rinsing out my mouth first, I was essentially doing a shot of pure alcohol. At the end of the tasting, back in the Park Hyatt, I could not figure out how I had the worst hang over (well one of) in my life. WTF?! One call from a winemaker friend solved that mystery. Yep, trace alcohol sticks to your palate, tongue. So rinse and then chug. Unless you’d like to experience the above (which btw, hang overs CAN be sweated out in steam baths).

One last thought on water—avoid the sparkling kind. You want bottled or filtered water with the most clean, neutral taste. Sparkling water tends to have more minerals that skew your palate’s sharpness.

4. Some respect please:

I am gonna BEG and SCREAM about this one. People, please, please, please, serve the wines at their proper temperature. Would you serve coq au vin cold? Would you put ceviche in the oven? Hell no! So don’t serve champagne at 15C instead of 7C. Don’t let your Cabernet heat up to above 16-17C. Don’t know what the temperatures are? Read here.

Wines are made with love, care, passion. Treat them with some respect. They will show their best when they are served at the correct temperature.

5. Pen & Paper:

While our minds are capable of retaining tons of information, when it comes to wine tastings, I find that the information goes in and out almost immediately. Why? Because you’re trying to transform a sensation and experience and capture it with words. Try to describe taste, just try. You have to dance around it, compare it, put adjectives to it.  But it is an elusive beast. Plus, wines change as you try them.

For an interesting experiment with your next bottle of, say the delicious Terrunyo Carmenere, try this: open it and taste the wine.  Decant it and serve yourself one glass. Try the glass every 15-20 minutes over the next hour. Then let it sit for another hour. Try again. You can even keep it in a cool place and come back 4 hours or even 8 hours later. You get the picture.

Wine is a living being. Think of it like a flower, recently cut. It needs water to open those buds and show its beauty. Oxygen for wine, when opening a bottle, is EXACTLY the same.

If you have pen & paper to capture these observations, my humble opinion is that you’ll learn a lot about the nature and essence of the wine. The way it is. What it’s purpose is (beyond drinking it for pleasure). Wines are like people. Think of trying to describe it like you would new friends you met at a dinner party. Your first impressions won’t be the same as the end of the night. Now only if you can remember them.

Thanks to Slack for the pic.