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Wine Tasting: How To Develop Your Palate

By • Sep 24th, 2008 • Category: Wine Education

There are many good reasons to develop your palate and start recognising and appreciating the many different flavours and aromas in wine. It’s a skill that can be learned and improved. With it comes the satisfaction of having the knowledge and experience to recognise wine flavours and be more discerning about what you enjoy and what constitutes good value for you.

Taste alone is categorised in four ways: bitter, salty, sour and sweet. The complexity of what we taste comes from a combination of experiences of which smell makes up a large part. Sight and even touch can also play a role.

The reason we talk about developing a palate is that while we react instinctively to smells and taste, it takes some knowledge and practice to be able to identify and remember individual components.

So, how do you go about learning the skills required to recognise wine flavours?

One of the best ways is to deliberately taste the flavours commonly found in wine and build up a deeper appreciation and memory for these flavours.  You could start with berry flavours found in hearty red wines and taste the difference between the fruits. Don’t start with wines but with the fruits themselves or, for a more concentrated flavour, spoonfuls of jam or preserves. By doing this you can develop your own palate and learn to know blueberry, redcurrant, blackberry etc.

Over time you’ll find it easier to recognise the same flavours in wine. It might help to ask specific questions while developing your wine palate. So instead of starting with the open ended question of what you can taste in a wine it might help to ask yourself if it tastes of blackberries or redcurrants for example.

Do the same with other core flavour profiles such as chocolate, pineapple, mushrooms.

A fantastic guide for knowing what flavours to look out for and how to categorise them is this wine wheel.

As well as tasting lots of things also cultivate the habit of smelling a variety of things and remembering the different sensations and aromas. Smell fruit, vegies, plants, food, in fact everything and you’ll find that you’ll quickly be able to place aromas.

Taste lots of wine especially two or three different wines of the same variety together whenever you get the chance.Talk about what you can taste if you have the opportunity but also remember that everyone’s frame of reference is unique to them so what you taste can be different to someone elses experience.


Filed Under: Wine Education





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