What is the secret of sensorial tasting? How do you become a wine taster? How
can you tell the aromas of wine and describe them? These are just few of the
many questions people ask me in occasion of wine events I organize or at which
I take part. These questions always remind me about those times when I was
getting into wine with an analytic approach and I was having quite a hard
time in telling aromas, in other words, I was desperately trying to recognize
something familiar in a glass. It is not easy: in the beginning it is
depressing to try to do your best in order to proficiently analyze the
sensorial qualities of wine, most of the time you end up believing those who
can do that are just impostors or maybe good speakers. With time, and this
means - specifically - practicing a lot, training even more, uncorking an
impressive number of bottles, filling and emptying a lot of glasses, you start
to understand something, of course, a lot more than something.
I supported many times the idea sensorial tasting is an art because it takes
all of our senses - just like any artistic expression - and, equally important,
our emotional and intellectual involvement. A matter of culture, among the many
things, allowing us to understand the expression of certain wines, and maybe
not all of them, and this is what happens when we see a painting or listen to a
musical composition. Nature and man become artists: their wines represents
their works. With wine, in a sense, happens what we sometimes experience in
observing a painting or a sculpture, as well as when we listen to a musical
composition. It can in fact happen that at first we do not understand the
meaning - also because of prejudices, mood and emotional condition of the
moment - and we need many attempts to understand it.
Maybe the first secret of sensorial tasting is to be free of prejudices. This
means, among the many things, to not make the mistake of evaluating a wine
exclusively by relying on your personal taste. Everyone undeniably has his or
her own preference and our taste affects both our choices and judgment. This
approach, although legitimate and understandable, cannot however significantly
affect sensorial and critical tasting when this is done professionally. If
depends, of course, on what you want to get from sensorial tasting, while
noticing that even the simple statement I like it, I do not like it is, on
its own, a respectable critical expression. In this case, it is a subjective
opinion only, of course indicative for those or the circumstances in which it
is being expressed. It becomes a totally different thing when this subjective
opinion is expressed with the arrogant pretension it should be considered as
objective and reliable.
Then you need training, practicing, the virtually daily use of the glass -
always with respect - and the renewed curiosity of learning something new.
There is more, of course, including the pleasure of experiencing old emotions
again and sensations met in the past which - although they can seem familiar
- they are always new. On this regard, an important role is played by memory,
not only the evocative one, indeed sensorial memory, that is the skill to
associate a stimulus to a well known and recognizable characteristic.
Nevertheless to say, memory is formed with the practice of analytic tasting
only, a task requiring concentration and attention. This is a very important
aspect because it lets you increase your experience, a quality which will
always be a loyal companion during tasting and to which you can trust in. Of
course, experience and memory can be developed only with a continuous training
and practice.
Curiosity is the approach allowing the development of your own sensorial
notions, in particular aromas. Sometimes they ask me how you can tell a
specific aroma from the rich bouquet of wine emerging from a glass. The answer,
in this case, is very simple. You can tell an aroma - or any other sensorial
stimulus - only in case you experienced it in the past. It is clear it is
impossible to tell the aroma of kiwi - or any other thing - in case you never
smelt it and then memorized. After all, you can tell what you know. This
is why curiosity becomes fundamental in order to build your own knowledge of
aromas, or better to say, your own olfactory memory. An exercise you can
continuously do all day long by simply paying attention - consciously -
whenever you smell everything, including those things having no apparent
association to wine.
Moreover, it is very important to know tasting techniques and their use.
Sensorial tasting is not, in fact, the practice of smelling the content of a
glass, to watch it with attention and to sip it, indeed it is the the
result of such tasks done by successfully applying specific techniques. These
techniques, when properly used, make the sensorial tasting task easier while
favoring the understanding of each phase. In other words, using a method is,
like to say, one of the many secrets. To summarize things up, the secret of
sensorial tasting is just the sum of many small and big secrets which are
everything but not secrets. Practice and training are the main conditions which
will make you become a good taster. This does not mean you have to taste fine
and excellent wines only: low quality wines having faults are equally
important. Defective wines in fact offer an important chance of study you
should never miss. Taste and taste over and over, with attention, commitment
and awareness: this is the secret.
Antonello Biancalana
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