Note: to make reading this article more enjoyable and instructive, you may wish to follow along with a glass of wine in hand!

In the world of wine tasting, there are four key elements involved in the evaluation of any wine: appearance (i.e., robe or color and legs), nose, taste, and finish of the wine.  The four evaluation steps of wine tasting, which focus on these four key elements, are:  Appearance (Color & Legs), Swirl, Smell, and Taste. Today, let’s discuss the first two steps – Appearance and Swirl.

Appearance
You can tell much about a wine simply by studying its appearance. The wine should be poured into a clear glass and held in front of a white background (a tablecloth or piece of paper will serve nicely) so that you can examine the robe or color.  Tilt your glass of wine over a white surface without spilling any of the contents and observe the color of the wine. The color of wine varies tremendously, even within the same type of wine.

You can guess the age of a red wine by observing its "rim" or rim color.  Again, tilt the glass slightly and look at the edge of the wine.  A purple tint may indicate youth while orange to brown tint indicates maturity. The range of colors that you may see depends, of course, on whether you are evaluating a white or red wine. Here are the appearance factors that you should observe:
           
COLOR DEPTH:        
Watery, pale, medium, deep, dark

COLOR HUE:(youngest to oldest wine)
WHITE WINE: Greenish, yellow, straw yellow, gold, amber
RED WINE: Purple-red, ruby, garnet, brick, brown
ROSÈ WINE: Pink, Salmon, orange

CLARITY:      
Clear, Slight Haze, Dull, Cloudy

Swirl
Swirling the wine serves many purposes, but visually it allows you to observe the body of the wine. "Good legs" may indicate a thicker body and a higher alcohol content and/or sweetness level. For normal wines it is possible to guess the alcohol content by counting the number of “legs” or teardrops falling from the top of the rim of the swirl mark in your wine glass. Three to four tears per linear inch around the glass indicates the wine has about 11 percent alcohol.  Six to eight tears per inch are usually indicative of a 14 to 15 percent alcohol wine.  It is fun to swirl, observe, and guess the alcohol content based on legs before looking at the label on the bottle to confirm.  You can guess quite accurately with a little practice.  Note that a dirty wine glass will not allow the legs to form properly for this particular evaluation.  Wait staff will sometimes handle wine glasses by the bowl when setting a table and this will also hinder your ability to observe the legs. Sometimes, the legs will begin to form in small tight groups that re-combine into larger legs about ¼ inch below the rim of the swirled top edge of the wine.  In this case, use the count that is below this level when evaluating the alcohol level of a wine. The swirl evaluation step is important in that it allows the bowl to fill with the vapor of the wine so that you can judge the nose (aroma)… that is coming up in the next article!

Next time: Evaluating a Wine – Part 2:  The Nose

- Chuck Blethen, Vigneron in Residence, Black Mountain Oasis Vineyard, Scottsdale, AZ