Runnin’ Blind… Tasting
Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
Have you ever wondered how the professionals are able to pinpoint what kind of wine it is just by tasting it?
It’s really not just a parlor trick - it’s a skill. And like any skill, anybody can master it with a little work. The good thing is, this is the kind of work where you can have fun along the way and drink lots of wine!
At its most simple, blind tasting combines the skill of wine characterization with the knowledge of different grapes and wine making regions. It requires developing your palate to recognize the characteristics of the wine that come from the grapes, the region/terroir, and winemaking techniques, and then using deductive techniques based upon the theoretical knowledge of those same factors (grapes, terroir, winemaking).
The Court of Master Sommeliers calls it the Deductive Tasting Format. The Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) calls it Systematic Tasting. They both outline a step-by-step guide to building blind tasting skills.
For our purposes, let’s just call it deductive tasting. This serves as an introduction to the methodology. You can further hone your skills with a Wine Characterization training package, then follow that up with Blind Tasting packages which include 6 bottles of wine as well as the important tasting notes and conclusions.
The first step is to characterize the wine.
First the preparation process. This might be old hat to some of you, but let’s talk about it anyway.
Use the right glassware. To get the most out of the wine, don’t use your favorite coffee mug, even though it might be handy. The effect of the shape of a wine glass on the taste of the wine is an entirely different, and big, subject. For our purposes, though, try to use a wine glass that has a rounded bowl that tapers in slightly at the top. The wideness of the bowl allows the wine to “breathe” and release a bouquet; the taper keeps the bouquet in the glass where you can smell it.
Use the glassware that has the thinnest “lip” on the glass that you can find. The shape can affect the way the liquid hits your mouth – you just want the glass to interfere as little as possible.
Make sure the glassware is clean, with no water spots, smears etc.
Don’t try the white wines too cold (can dampen the flavors), or the reds too warm (just a hair below room temperature is perfect). Also, try to let the wines “breathe” a little and open up a little bit (don’t “pop and pour”, as they say). Wines can be a little less expressive when just poured.
Try not to overfill the glass. Usually, 1.5 – 2 oz of wine is a good amount. That’s about up to the widest point of a good wine glass. Any lower, and there may not be enough wine to produce a bouquet, and much more than that and there may not be enough air space in your glass to collect the bouquet and any aromas.
Do this in a room with good lighting. It’s hard to see the wine if it’s dark!
Once you’re set up and prepared, then comes the characterization process. This walks you through the things you should consider when evaluating a wine.
First, look at the wine. Hold it against a white background in good lighting.
What color is it? Is red, orange/brown, purple? This can give you hints around grape type, age of the wine and winemaking techniques. Each grape will produce a wine with a characteristic color, which can change somewhat with age and winemaking technique.
How intense/dark is the color? Is it lighter (can you see through it, can you read a piece of paper behind it? Or is it too dense to see through? Certain grapes will produce deep, dark wines, others will produce lighter colored wines, depending on how much pigment is in the skins and the wine making technique.
Legs: The legs are the “dribbles” that run down inside of the glass after you swirl the wine. This can give you hints around the alcohol content, extraction level and residual sugar. Note that if you have a dirty glass, or less than optimal glassware (i.e., plastic or badly shaped), this is a characteristic that will be tough to assess.
Second, smell the wine. What do you smell, and how intensely? These characteristics will give you clues towards what grape it is and to winemaking technique which leads to region.
Fruits: The more specific you can be the better. Is it strawberry, or plum? What is the fruit condition? Is it fresh fruit, ripe fruit, cooked fruit, jam?
Flowers: Is the wine floral? And what flowers? This is an indicator of grape type.
Oak: Do you smell any common indicators of oak? Toast, vanilla, cocoa, baking spices. This will give you hints around winemaking technique and therefore region.
Other: Common things to look for are green pepper, mint, herbs, earth, stone, etc. Anything that you smell can be a hint around what the wine is.
Third, taste the wine. Make sure you let the wine completely fill your mouth – swish it around to coat all parts of your mouth.
Do you taste something other than what you smelled? This can also be a clue.
Fourth, characterize the structure of the wine. The structure can be thought of as all the other characteristics other than aromas and flavors.
Sweetness – is it sweet, off-dry, dry or bone-dry?
Acid – Is it low/medium/high acid?
Tannin – how much tannin is there? The texture of the tannin is also something you should note. Are they grippy, silky, rustic?
Alcohol – is it low/med/high?
Body – light/med/high? How much body does the wine have?
Finish – how long is the finish? Does it disappear immediately, or linger? While this doesn’t factor in very much in blind tasting, this is one characteristic that you can use to judge the quality of the wine.
Intensity – is the flavor delicate or is it intense?
Other – things like texture – is it linear in the mouth, or rounded and mouth filling? Does it have an oily or viscous texture?
This wine characterization step is very important to practice. If you cannot identify the characteristics of the wine, you have no clues to make any conclusions about what it is. For example, it would be like someone asking you to tell you what fruit you have, but only knowing that it grows on a tree.
Characterizing the wine will also give you an idea about the overall quality of the wine. If you only get this far, this is all still very useful information in evaluating the wine you are drinking. Does the wine taste like it should? Wines made from certain grapes and certain regions should have a certain profile – this is called typicity. For example, a wine made from Gamay grape should not taste like it’s a wine made from Syrah.
In addition, the amount of detail you find when you characterize a wine is a quality indicator. Do you taste simply “red fruits”, or can you break it into “ripe and fresh red cherry, candied raspberry and strawberry with pomegranate seeds”? The more you can taste/smell in a wine means it’s a higher quality wine. When it comes to the structure of a wine, think about how harmonious the different characteristics are – does it taste flabby, does the oak overwhelm everything, is the finish long and complex, or does the taste of the wine disappear?
Once you’ve characterized the wines, then the deductive part takes over to identify the grape, region and age of the wine. This is the step where you marry your knowledge of grapes and wine regions with what you already know about the wine to take you to a conclusion.
As a simplistic example, a first cut might be – is the wine white or red? If it’s white, then you have already automatically eliminated all the red wine grapes from the possible solution.
It’s like following a flow chart. If the wine is not significantly floral, for example, then you can eliminate all the aromatic grapes. If there is a lot of apple, then you can eliminate all grapes that do not have apple as a common aroma. And so on, until you get to your final conclusions.
And that’s it! Sort of. Want to test out what you’ve just learned? Grab these wines, come back to the article, and taste along! Twin Islands Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand & Lucas & Lewellen Pinot Noir from California. Or you can continue reading and think of these steps the next time you get into a glass. Cheers!
Let’s walk through a couple wines together. While we will know what the wines are already, we can still walk through the entire process.
Let’s start with the Twin Islands Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand
Look at the color – It’s a light yellow, with green reflections. No real legs to note.
Smell the wine –
It has a medium+ intensity bouquet.
Fruit – Ripe citrus especially grapefruit, and tropical fruit (passion fruit, guava), gooseberry. No strong amounts of apple/pear/peach or other fruits.
Non-fruit – there is some floralness, but medium intensity, a distinct herbalness (fresh cut grass, green pepper/jalapeno), no vegetal qualities, no honey or botrytis, no oxidative qualities (e.g. nuttiness), no indication of lees, no doughy/bread/yeast character, no buttery/creamy flavors, no significant earthy/wet leaf characteristics, no stone/mineral/rock character, no new oak character (vanilla, baking spice, smoke).
Taste the wine. Does the palate match the aroma? In this case, yes.
Take a second sip of wine. This is where you characterize the structure:
No phenolic bitterness
The wine is dry, but not bone-dry
High acid
No tannin
Medium alcohol
Medium bodied
Medium plus length on the finish
Medium plus intensity on the palate
Once we’ve characterized the wine, then we get to the deductive portion. This is where you start to focus on the characteristics that stand out in the wine – the markers, if you will, that will lead you to your final conclusion.
A well-chosen wine for a blind tasting will exhibit typicity. In addition, until you get to a high level, the wines chosen for the blind will represent fairly common grapes from regions that are known for producing wines with that grape. For instance, you will not get a wine made from an obscure Italian grape made by the only producer in Texas that decided to try making a wine from it. If you have a Chardonnay, it will have characteristics appropriate from a Chardonnay, and one produced from regions best known for Chardonnay, such as Burgundy and California.
So knowing that, let’s first get to a guess on the grape. In a white wine, almost all will have a little bit of white flower and lemon present. So let’s move on to the fruits that not all wines have. Gooseberry is very strong here. What other characteristics have we noted? A green note expressed as grass/hay. No phenolic bitterness. Dry, high acid, no significant oak/lees treatment.
In a white wine, if you get a significant green note with high acidity, that should point you straight at Sauvignon Blanc. There are few, if any, commonly testable white wines that have this level of pyrazine. Grüner Veltliner is a distant possibility, there would be a more significant vegetal character (fennel, radish), and the presence of phenolic bitterness. So this is not Grüner Veltliner. That leaves us with Sauvignon Blanc.
Let’s talk about region. Sauvignon Blanc from where? You will most commonly find Sauvignon Blanc from three or four places. New Zealand, the Loire (Sancerre, Pouilly-Fume), and Bordeaux (as one grape in Bordeaux Blanc). Less commonly, California and South Africa.
Many California and Bordeaux examples will use oak. We have eliminated any oak usage in our characterization.
So what does that leave us? New Zealand, Loire, or South Africa. You will occasionally see some oak usage in South Africa. A Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa will also tend to be less overtly fruit-forward with somewhat more tempered gooseberry and grapefruit. Also, if you’re a betting person, you would use the fact that you are much less likely to get a South African Sauvignon Blanc in a blind tasting than one from New Zealand or the Loire.
What criteria would you use to decide between New Zealand and the Loire? New Zealand generally will finish with lots of ripe fruits, including tropical fruits, with no significant minerality. The Loire Sauvignon Blanc will finish more bone-dry with tart citrus notes and a distinct minerality.
What did we say about this wine? Tropical fruit, little to no minerality. Dry, but not bone-dry. So where does that lead us? New Zealand.
How old is the wine? To gauge the age of the wine, look at the color. A white wine will darken with age and lose a little “brightness”. Also check to see if it has any oxidative character. An aging white wine will start to pick up oxidative/nutty characteristics. Our wine is bright and light colored, with no perceptible oxidative character. With no oak treatment, most wines will be released the year after harvest. So our wine is most likely very young.
What is our final conclusion? Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, 1 or 2 years old max.
Let’s do the same thing with a red - Lucas & Lewellen Pinot Noir from California
Medium minus red color, no hints of purple or garnet.
No really significant legs. There may be a faint ruby tinge to the legs, but nothing obvious.
Medium intensity bouquet, with aromas of ripe and jammy red fruits (predominantly red cherry, but with ripe strawberry and candied raspberry). A little bit of rose petal, and a floral perfume, with a touch of forest floor and earth. No significant herbalness, no vegetal quality, no mint or eucalyptus, no pepper, coffee, mocha, gameyness, blood, cured meat, leather, balsamic, tar, stone, rock or mineral, some evidence of baking spices (nutmeg, clove).
Palate confirms the bouquet, but there is a cream character to it, adding in notes of chocolate, chocolate covered cherries.
Dry, but fruit-forward, medium/medium plus acid, medium minus tannins (smooth), medium/medium plus alcohol, medium bodied, medium plus finish, medium to medium plus intensity. Clean but soft and plush texture in the mouth.
What grape could this be? The first hint is the color. When you see a wine this light, you should immediately start focusing in on grapes like Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Grenache, perhaps Sangiovese and Zinfandel. You can rule out any grapes that produce wines that are purple (e.g. Malbec) or much more concentrated (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon).
Let’s rule out Sangiovese. You would expect to have some savory herbs and/or tomato leaf. We didn’t call that out as significant traits.
Let’s rule out Zinfandel. While there are ripe fruits, there is no dried fruit character, and no spice that you would expect with this varietal.
Let’s rule out Nebbiolo. Nebbiolo, while light in color, has LOTS of tannin. We only called medium tannin – so not Nebbiolo.
Seems like Grenache and Pinot Noir are the most likely candidates. How to choose between them? Grenache often has more spice (not baking spice which comes from oak) than Pinot Noir and can have a more plush texture in the mouth. Not a strong pointer, and no one will be faulted for choosing Grenache, but let’s pick Pinot Noir for that reason.
So Pinot Noir from where? The most likely places are Burgundy, Oregon and California. While there are many other areas that produce quality Pinot Noir (New Zealand, Germany, and many others), usually for a blind tasting you’ll have a wine from one of those big three. Not saying that someone may not try to slip in a Pinot Noir from someplace else, but playing the odds… choose between Burgundy, Oregon and California.
Let’s eliminate Burgundy. It’s a cool-climate region, and an old-world region. The fruit character is very ripe, pointing towards a warmer region. In addition, you will often find that with old-world wines the fruit character will change from ripe/jammy on the nose to fresh/tart on the palate. This wine did not do so. A Burgundy may start with fruit, but will end with more earthy characteristics than a New World wine. This wine started with fruit and ended with fruit, pointing distinctly to a New World location.
So, either Oregon or California would be a good choice. California is much riper, in general, and a little more fruit-forward then Oregon, which will also tend to have a bit higher acid. This is a very ripe-fruited wine with medium-to-medium-plus acid. Go with the gut - Let’s go with California.
How old? A red wine will typically pick up a little garnet or orange color with age. There was no indication of bricking. It will typically pick up some umami flavors as well – not on this wine. So relatively young. This is another place where you will just have to go with your first inclination. There is some oak character, so probably about 1 year in oak… but no real signs of age, so maybe still in that 1-3 year range, probably on the higher end of that range, so 3 years.
Final guess – Pinot Noir from California, 3 years old.
As you can see, the final conclusions in a blind tasting can be part logic, part art. The most important thing is not that you get the answer completely correct but that you used the right process in getting to that conclusion. In other words, did you correctly characterize the wine for aroma, palate and structure, AND, given the characteristics you identified, did you reach a conclusion that is justifiable based upon the data?
Hope you all can see how much fun it is to challenge yourself and do some blind tasting. Grab some friends and give it a try! What it takes is practice, practice, practice!