Train Your Wine Palate

Understanding one’s wine palate is a journey and can lead to some exciting and eye-opening experiences. It can also lead to frustration if you don’t fully understand it. Your wine palate is made up of more than just your taste buds. Knowing that taste, smell, and feel all work together to inform your palate is the first step in understanding your palate. The mouth feel of a wine, from silky to sandpapery, plays an important part in the experience of a glass of wine, just as smelling and tasting the wine does. Knowing this will make training your wine palate a little easier.

The best way to train your wine palate is to drink a lot of wine. That may seem obvious, but it is important when doing this to drink responsibly and mindfully. You can drink mindfully by employing the “5 S’s of wine tasting”. The 5 S’s are See, Swirl, Smell, Sip, and Savor. Using these 5 steps is a great way to build your wine palate.

See: Hold the wine, in a glass, up to a white background in a well-lit room. Note the color and the saturation of the color. Often this can give the drinker clues as to how the wine will taste. IS the color bold and bright? Or is it dull and faded? Is your red wine more of a deep red or a purple-black? Is your white wine a pale gold or a straw yellow? These can give ideas of the grape variety and aging specifics. A general rule to keep in mind is: the more saturated the color, the more intense the flavor.

Swirl: Swirl the wine in the glass to aerate the wine. This will help “open up” the flavors in the glass and allow you to detect more subtle flavors. Also, note the streaks, or “legs”, that the wine leave on the glass after a swirl. Sweeter wines will leave thick viscous “legs” that run down the glass slowly. Dryer wines leave thinner, quicker “legs”.

Smell: This is an essential step in wine stating, as most of your wine palate is informed by your sense of smell. Smell the wine and focus on any scents that jump out to you. You may smell some fruit, wood, smoke, spice, herbs, and more. Try to pick out the elements you smell and visualize them. This will help create a frame of reference for future bottles of wine. What you smell from the wine is called a “bouquet”. A wine’s bouquet can also let you know if the wine has been corked or damaged due to oxidation or yeast contamination. Remember, smelling your wine has a huge impact on what you taste in the following “S”.

Sip: This step would seemingly be the most important step in the wine tasting process. And while it is highly important, it is just below Smell in importance, as smell informs the sip. Sipping is when you actually taste the wine and explore the depth of flavor in the glass. Does the flavor on the tongue vary from the bouquet you smelled? Are there new flavors present on the tongue? Note hoe the wine feels in your mouth. Is it light and dry? Or does it feel silky and heavy? Let the wine coat your mouth and tongue and let your tongue feel the roof and sides of your mouth. Does the wine leave you mouth feeling smooth or a little rough, like sandpaper? This is determined by the tannic content of the wine. All of these are important in judging the taste and overall experience of the wine. Note if the flavor changes after you swallow. That is called “the finish”. How long does the finish last on your tongue? Some can last for over a minute.

Savor: This is a step that involves all the previous steps. Savoring is mostly about taking your time and really paying attention to what you are seeing, smelling, or tasting. Sit with the flavors and smells you encounter to really get to know them. Repeat these steps to familiarize yourself with the bottle you are drinking and repeat these steps with different wines to discover similarities and differences in various bottles. If you wish, you can take notes and go through this process with friends so that you can discuss what you are tasting and smelling. The more mindful you are of what you are drinking, the more easily your palate will evolve.