Looking at wine

In the first of a five-part series on tasting, our oenologist shares how just looking at a glass of wine can tell you much about its quality.

THERE are millions of wines in the world, thousands of new wines entering the marketplace – and hundreds of people writing about wine. So, yes, you can read all you want about wine, but it is hardly the best way to learn about it.

Sampling wine is the best approach in the seemingly immense world of wine. And it is the most practical, as most people would seldom taste wine alone; it’s natural to gather like-minded friends who can share the cost of purchasing bottles.

Wine tasting groups can be formed anywhere – ask your friends if they are interested to take part. Form a group at your workplace, as wine tasting can be a good team building exercise. Contact your local wine merchant and he/she might have clients like yourself, looking to form a wine “club’’. Ultimately, in tasting with a few others, you get to exchange ideas and broaden perspectives through discussion.

Holding a glass of wine against a white background, like your notepaper, is a good way to really examine the colour of the wine. –

If you are a beginner, resist the temptation to taste a wide variety of wines. Instead, choose just one or two varieties. That way, you can taste various versions (vintages, diverse producers, different country/region, origins) of the same variety.

Advanced tasters might use similar wines. But they would be examining the wine in detail to learn about the intricate aspects of the wine. For example, whether natural yeast fermentations of the same variety might taste different from a wine fermented using freeze-dried yeast; whether the same variety, aged in American oak tastes different to that aged in French oak barrels.

Ultimately, you need a structured approach when tasting wines. We covered some of these aspects in various instalments of Uncorked but here’s a checklist for assessing wines by sight. I have also included some additional facets of wine that “advanced’’ tasters should look out for.

Eyes can inform

Limpidity – is the wine clear, limpid or crystal-clear, gassy or cloudy or hazy?

Brilliance – is it dazzling and does it reflect light, is it bright or dull, flat and murky?

Intensity – is it deep, or pale and lacking in intensity?

These are the tint and colour descriptors you should get to know:

White wines – white-gold, green-gold, pale-gold, golden, pale yellow, light yellow, canary yellow, green-yellow, gold-green, grey-yellow, water-green, amber-yellow, straw, old gold, rose.

Red wines – violet, purple, scarlet, garnet red, peony, deep purple, cherry red, dark cherry, bright cherry, ruby, bright red, brick red, orange-red, brown, mahogany, tile red.

Rosé wines – light scarlet, raspberry, light claret, orange tint, salmon, apricot. Quality rosé wines often show a purple edge when the glass is tilted. Sparkling wines – similar to descriptors for white or rosé wines, but also including a description of the size of bubble, quantity, rate, duration.

Condition – wines that are unusually brown (white wine) or too light coloured (red wine) for their “age” may have been adversely affected by premature oxidation or by improper storage (heat, light, etc).

Inferring from look, colour, tint

Maturity of wine – As the wine matures, colours change due to slow oxidation in the bottle. Ageing of wines in oak barrels is an oxidative process too. Red wines turn from red to ruby, brick red to mahogany and then tawny or amber brown. As tannins fall out in the sediment, so do the anthocyanins and colours. White wines turn a darker shade that changes from straw to gold and then to brown from slow oxidation.

Grape variety – for example, the thick skins of Zinfandel provide more colour, the thin skins of Pinot Noir provide less colour.

Maturity of fruit – colour builds up as the fruit approaches optimum ripeness.

Soil type – soils rich in iron produce more scarlet colour.

Growing temperature – cool climate grapes have relatively thicker skins and provide more pigments and colour. Warm dry summers produce more scarlet colour.

Extraction – The extraction of phenolic compounds, including anthocyanins, from grape skins during fermentation and maceration provides colour in wine. Higher fermentation temperatures extract more colour; and you can surmise that aromas are affected by higher temperature fermentations, and that the wine might taste more jammy rather than fruity or floral.

Others – The condition of the wine, whether it has been filtered or is there a lot of suspended particles in a young wine; the pH and its reactions with sulphur dioxide in wine, etc.

Telling age from colour

White wines – if they look green, they’re less than two years old; yellow means wine with a few years maturation; gold means well aged wine more than six years old.

Red wines – violet means youthful wines between one and three years old; ruby red are wines matured two to fours years in the bottle; tile red means mature wines, five to as much as 15 years old.

Rosé wines – whitish pink ones are less than two years old; pinkish grey means wines matured for two to fours years in the bottle; amber means a mature wine.

Ed Soon is a qualified oenologist and has run wine shops and worked as a winemaker in various countries. He now writes and teaches about wine around Asia.