The PIQUANTE method for wine tasting: prepare and inspect

Delving into the first two steps of my systematic approach to wine tasting. Learn how to prepare the right conditions. And what to look for when inspecting the wine

Welcome to the second part of my wine tasting series. Leave behind snobbiness and unease, as I help demystify wine tasting and guide you through this fascinating “art”. My four-part series about wine tasting is structured as follows:

1. Introduction to wine tasting and outline of the PIQUANTE method
2. PIQUANTE method: prepare and inspect (this article)
3. PIQUANTE method: swirl and sniff
4. PIQUANTE method: examine the palate and draw evaluations

The PIQUANTE method is a systematic approach that I always use when wine tasting. The acronym “PIQUANTE” stands for Prepare, Inspect, QUietly smell, Agitate, Nose, Taste and Evaluate. In this article I will focus on the first two steps of the process: Prepare and Inspect. 

Prepare: make sure you have the right conditions

This is really the step zero of your wine tasting process. Even before the wine is served, you need to ensure that everything is set up correctly. I will highlight the optimal conditions for wine tasting. I appreciate that in real life you may not be able to meet all these ideal parameters. Nevertheless, it’s good to know what to aim for.

There are four main aspects to consider: environment, glasses, tools, the taster’s physical and mental preparation. I will go through each one highlighting what to consider.

Environment

This is about where the wine tasting takes place. Ideally, you want the following conditions:

• The right illumination: you need enough light to correctly assess the visual aspects of the wine (see the Inspect step below). Either a natural or neutral light source is preferable. Otherwise, the wine’s hue might be distorted (for example, a fluorescent light might confer a yellowish tint)
• No strong odours: if there are strong scents in the environment, they will overwhelm the wine’s aromas and jeopardise your capacity for flavour recognition
• A calm environment: avoiding chaos and loud noises helps the taster focus solely on the wine and its characteristics

Glasses

The right container will let the wine fully express its potential and unfold its aromas. There are a few things to consider:

• Material: avoid cups that are made from plastic or any other material other than glass for your wine. Glass is inert and odourless, therefore it does not taint the wine’s aromas. Unless treated, glass is also totally transparent, allowing the visual aspects of the wine to be clearly analysed. Last but not the least, glass is the most environmentally friendly material. One more reason to prefer it!
• Shape: Choosing the right-shaped goblet fully unlocks a wine’s potential and efficiently delivers its message to the taster. You should therefore pay attention to the shape of your glass. Suitable wine glasses have three main components: a base (or foot), stem and bowl. The base has the effect of keeping the cup in a vertical position. The stem separates the base from the bowl. The latter is destined to contain the liquid.
  • Hold the glass either from the stem or the base – but avoid grasping the bowl for two reasons. First (and most importantly), if you hold a glass by the bowl, when sniffing the wine, you will also smell the body odours wafting from your hand. Secondly, your hand will warm up the wine causing you not to taste it at its optimal temperature
  • The ideal wine cup features a bowl that is wide at the base and narrower at its rim. Aim for a glass with that shape. Such a design permits comfortable swirling. It also allows enough oxygen to interact with the wine and direct its flavours upwards to the taster’s nose
  • The worldwide recognised standard for tasting stemware is the ISO tasting glass. You will find this stemware used in the most serious of wine tastings. I totally recommend them. They’re quite small glasses, designed to comfortably assess a wine’s characteristics with a relatively small pour. ISO glasses are reasonably priced and resistant to breakage. Another big advantage is its universality. Using a standardised glass means you can compare different wines with the same tool. The glass becomes a transparent tool for an impartial evaluation rather than another variable of the equation
  • Some manufacturers (most notably Riedel) recommend a specific stemware to get the most out of each grape variety or style. For example, it is suggested that pinot noir requires a larger bowl base, Bordeaux (or other full-bodied reds) excel in bigger and taller bowls, syrah requires a taller cup shape, etc. While these glasses are certainly gorgeous and classy, there is no scientific evidence that a particular varietal performs better in certain stemware
• Decorations: avoid glassware with texture, engravings and colour. All these decorations will only distract you from an accurate visual analysis of the wine. A worthwhile wine does not need such extraneous features. The glass should be totally transparent and without embellishments. 

Tools

You need a few other tools to correctly taste wine. Luckily these tools are something you can easily carry everywhere:

• White surface: to comfortably analyse the hue and colour intensity of a wine you need to hold the liquid against a white surface. If your table area is white, then you are good! Otherwise, lay a white sheet of paper down and examine the wine’s colour against that surface
• Snacks: eating while tasting wine is totally up to you! I personally find it beneficial to snack a bit when tasting a large number of wines, as it is a good way to avoid palate fatigue. Unless you are performing a wine pairing exercise, the snacks you eat while wine tasting should be small and neutral in flavours. Your palate is quite sensitive and adapts quickly to what you eat, to the detriment of your aromas’ perception capabilities. Small pieces of bread or crackers are good options
• Pen and paper: I find that taking notes during the wine tasting process is one of the most beneficial things you can do. It stimulates your brain to find the right words to describe what you sense in the wine. This practice also inspires critical thought and helps you remember the wines long after your tasting session. When I read a particularly descriptive note of a wine I tasted in the past, for me it’s like tasting that wine a second time! You don’t have to write a poem for each wine. A few words about its aromas, structural components and your personal impressions will be enough.

Taster’s physical preparation

I know wine tasting doesn’t require the same level of preparation as running a marathon. However, here’s a few tips which will assist and maximise your wine tasting journey:

• Don’t wear perfume or cologne: this is perhaps the first unwritten rule for wine tasting. Strong fragrances will mess up your olfactive capabilities and those of the poor people next to you. Please don’t be that person!
• Before the wine tasting, avoid spicy and strong-flavoured food and drinks (coffee, spirits, etc.). If you ignore this advice, your palate will resent that poor choice and your ability to taste and smell wine will be diminished
• Avoid chocolate and toothpaste too close to the tasting: these will coat your mouth with a tiny layer of impermeable substance. Again, your tasting capabilities will be impaired
• It might be a good idea to sip a “test” wine before the actual tasting. In this way, you will prepare your mouth for alcohol and reset your taste buds. The test wine should be a relatively neutral wine, not too intense, preferably a white with a good acidity

Taster’s mental preparation

As esoteric and hippy as it might sound, this is actually an essential part of the preparation for wine tasting. Experienced sommeliers are known to practice yoga or other forms of meditation before their exams or important tasting sessions. The goal is to put the taster in a mental state where they are solely focused on the present. Avoiding distraction and freeing the mind from everything that interposes itself between you and the complex messages arising from the wine you are tasting.

Give yourself a few moments before the tasting to clear the mind. I don’t have any specific recommendations to achieve this mental state. Different individuals have different sensitivities. What is good for one person might be ineffective for someone else, or vice versa. If you want to fully listen to the wine, my advice is to find your own way to mentally prepare for the task. Design a personal routine and find your zen! 

Inspect: the appearance of the wine

Once you have completed your physical and mental preparations for wine tasting, it’s time to start! The liquid is poured into the glass in front of you. You plead: wine, talk to me! 

The first thing to do is to focus on the look of wine. The appearance might not be as significant as the nose and palate, but it does reveal important information. Use your eyes and analyse the liquid’s appearance in terms of clarity, brightness, intensity of colour, hue, tears (or legs) and other visual aspects.

Clarity

A healthy wine is usually clear and transparent. There is no sign of sediment in the glass. Conversely, if some suspended matter is visible and you can’t see clearly through the liquid, the wine is said to be hazy or cloudy. 

Haziness in wine can either be a sign of a fault or a deliberate decision by the winemaker. Some wines (for example most natural wines) are not filtered and therefore their appearance is cloudy even though they are perfectly sound (and sometimes delicious!)

Brightness

The brightness of a wine is particularly noticeable when looking at its surface. A bright wine normally indicates a high level of acidity. Conversely, in most cases a dull surface is a sign of a lower acidity.

Intensity of colour

Colour intensity indicates how much you can see through the liquid. The greater the intensity, the more opaque the colour. To determine the correct hue and intensity of a wine, you have to tilt the glass at 45 degrees in front of a white surface. Check the meniscus – the oval shape that the liquid forms when the glass it’s turned on its side. You can gauge intensity by assessing how much the colour extends from the core of the meniscus to the rim. If at the rim there is little colour, then the wine is said to be pale. On the other hand, if the pigments reach almost the border of the meniscus, the wine has a deep intensity. A medium intensity is somewhere in between.

For red wines, there is another simple way to determine colour intensity. While the glass is upright, look at it from above. If you can clearly see the underlying stem, the wine is pale. Conversely, if you cannot see anything below the liquid, the wine has a deep intensity. As usual, medium is something in between the two extremes (you can see the stem, but not very clearly).

When determining the colour intensity, bear in mind that the perceived shade depends on how much liquid is poured into your glass. The greater the amount of liquid, the darker the colour. If you are tasting several wines, pouring the same amount of liquid each time will help identify the differences in the wines’ colour across different samples.

Anthocyanins are the polyphenols responsible for colour in wine. These substances are found in the grape’s skin. As a consequence, thick-skinned grape varieties usually produce wines that display a deeper intensity of colour. For example, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec, syrah are black grapes that normally appear quite dark. On the other side, thin-skin grape varieties such as schiava, pinot noir and gamay normally have a paler intensity. 

However, there are exceptions. Nebbiolo (one of the best Italian grape varieties) is famous for its pale ruby colour, even though these grapes have a thick skin. This variety doesn’t have a lot of pigments, hence it’s lighter than what would be expected from such a grape.

Colour

The wine’s hue is itself an invitation to the sipper. Colour creates expectations (subconsciously and otherwise) in the taster’s mind. Entire kaleidoscopes of colours exist, far beyond just red and yellow:

• For red wines: violet (or purple), ruby, garnet (or brick red), tawny, brown (or mahogany)
• For white wines: yellow-green, lemon (or straw), gold, amber (or copper), brown
• For rosé  wines: pink (or onion skin), salmon, orange

There are three main factors which affect a wine’s colour: age, grape variety and the winemaking techniques employed. 

• Red wines get lighter with age: very young wines have a purple tint. For example, a young syrah or malbec will characteristically have a violet tinge. As wine ages, its colours will morph into garnet, then tawny hues. A 20 year-old Bordeaux is likely to look garnet or tawny to the eye. While very old wines can appear brown
• White wines become darker with age: green hue indicates a very young white wine. With age, white wines become gold, then amber and brown. A young riesling is often brilliant and lemon-hued. An old Auslese German riesling is more likely to be gold and richer in colour
• Rosé wines: when young they have an onion skin colour; with age, they gradually turn a dark orange

Some red grape varieties (usually the ones that don’t have a lot of pigments) transition quickly from ruby to tawny even at a relatively young age. Again, nebbiolo is a perfect example.

Winemaking techniques can also have an effect on the wine’s colour. The use of oak, especially for whites, make the wines have a golden/brownish hue. It’s easy to find big bold chardonnay that appears gold even at a young age. In that case, the colour is a clear indication of oak.

An extended period of maceration on the skin will make the wine darker. For whites, the wine will have a golden tinge even at an early stage. For reds, extended maceration usually means a darker colour.

Oxygen has a huge effect on the colour of both white and red wines. When wine is exposed to oxygen in the air they chemically react with each other. Over time, as the wine becomes oxidised, it turns brown (this happens for both reds and whites). Oxidation can occur deliberately or accidentally. Where the oxidation was unintended, the brown colour is indeed an indication of a wine fault. Oxidised wines lose all their freshness, displaying stale aromas and tasting like vinegar and rotten apples.

Some wines are deliberately oxidised as part of their style. Tawny port, Amontillado and Oloroso Sherry, vin jaune from Jura are famous examples of wines that are heavily oxidative as part of their style. In such cases, reds and whites will appear tawny or brown – not because they are particularly old (although they can be) – but thanks to the winemaking styles employed in their production.

Tears

While you might burst into tears when tasting a particularly epic wine, this is not what I’m talking about in this section. Tears (also known as legs or arcs) are the drops of liquid found on the sides of the wine glass’s internal surface. 

Tears in wine are caused by a physical phenomenon called the Marangoni effect. Without delving into too much detail, these arcs are caused by several factors, the most important being alcohol and sugar. Generally, the higher the alcohol content of the wine, the more tears will be found in the glass. Sweet wines also have numerous tears. 

Other factors such as atmospheric pressure, temperature and evaporation influence the formation and composition of tears. As a result, my personal advice is to take the number of tears present in a wine and the link to alcohol content with a pinch of salt. Always refer to the palate for a correct evaluation of a wine’s alcohol content.

Regardless of how much importance you are willing to give to wine tears, all wine critics would agree on one fact. There is no correlation between tears (their shape, numerosity, viscosity etc.) and the quality of the wine.

Other visual considerations

There might be other visual clues to consider when looking at a wine. For sparkling wine, one factor to consider is perlage (the bubbles).

Generally speaking, the finer the bubbles, the higher the quality of sparkling wine. Great Champagne are famous for their fine perlage. Fine bubbles mean that the fermentation occurred slowly, giving the wine greater balance and a better integration of flavours. Another quality criteria is the persistence of the bubbles. A never ending flow of frothy bubbles is commonly regarded as an indication of high quality. If the bubbles stop emerging after just a few seconds, that is perceived as the mark of an inferior sparkling wine. 

For still wines, another detail to look at is the deposit. You may occasionally find some sediments floating in your wine or resting at the bottom of your glass. Don’t despair! In most circumstances these particles are totally harmless and odourless. They might spoil the visual appeal of your wine, but not its taste. Deposit can be a sign of age (for both red and white wines) or might indicate that the wine is unfiltered/unfined. In any case, don’t pay too much attention to it. Deposit is not significant from a quality or structural point of view.

What’s next

That’s all for now folks! In this second part of my wine tasting series, I went through the first two steps of my PIQUANTE systematic approach. Prepare and Inspect. Now you know how to prepare for a wine tasting and what visual aspects to consider during your sensorial evaluation.

Next week I will deal with steps number 3, 4, and 5 of the PIQUANTE tasting approach: QUietly smell, Agitate and Nose. As you can imagine, it will be an article focused on the sense of olfaction. If there is anything you want me to clarify on wine tasting, don’t be shy and leave me a comment below. Stay in touch!

The third part of my wine tasting series is now available here.