Wine Tasting Step 1 - See

Brandon Walsh: Hi, I am Brandon Walsh and today we are discovering the wonderful world of wine. In this clip, I am going to discuss step one of the wine-tasting process, See.

Here is a sample wine-tasting scorecard. You will notice that there is a section labeled See. When you are looking at a wine, you are really looking for two things; color and intensity. This can give you clues as that how you think the wine should taste. With a white wine, you can go ahead and tilt the glass at a 45-degree angle, and look at it against the white background. Is the white wine straw colored, is it blonde, and is it very pale? Chardonnays tend to be more blonde and Rieslings can tend to be more pale. So, it s just from the color alone, you can start deducing what type of wine you think you are going to taste.

Same with the red wine; is the wine ruby-red, purple, or brick coloration, but also what you are really looking for is intensity. Now, with intensity a good trick is that take your scorecard and try to read the scorecard through the wine. If you can do that then the wine is probably light or medium bodied, if you cannot read the scorecard, the wine is probably heavy bodied. So, looking at the wine will give you clues as to what to expect when you taste.

In the next clip I will discuss wine-tasting step 2, Sniff.