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For most people, wine is an acquired taste. This is another way of describing what is called palate progression or maturing of the palate. As it pertains to wine, this means the progression from liking only sweet wines to being able to appreciate a complex, tannic red wine. When you drink wine, your palate encounters four sensations that contribute to the flavor of the wine: sweetness, body, tartness and astringency. Combining these taste sensations, I’ve created seven taste profiles that represent the stages that most wine drinkers pass through. I call these seven stages Quick Classifications because they are a convenient way to think about what you like. All of the wines in the Tasting Room are labeled with these classifications. Figure out what stage your palate is in and it will help you identify wines you will like.
Below are detailed descriptions of the four characteristics used in the Quick Classification system. Clearly there are many more than four ways to classify wine, but these four are basic and will suffice for many wine drinkers.
Sweetness : Sweet is the opposite of dry, that is a sweet wine is called sweet and a wine that is not sweet is called dry. We typically assume that sweetness is cause by the presence of sugar, however what I like to call apparent sweetness can also be caused by excessive fruitiness. Even though the two sensations are very different; sweetness being noticeable on the tip of the tongue and fruit coming mostly from smell, both can be perceived as sweet.
Body: Body is our perception of what is called a wine’s weight in the mouth. Wines are described on the one extreme as light, implying little or no feeling of body or weight in the mouth, and on the other extreme as full bodied, implying a significant feeling of body or weight. Note that body is a feeling, involving the sense of touch, rather than a taste. Body is mostly correlated with alcohol content, the higher the alcohol content the greater the sensation of weight or body.
Tartness: Tartness is caused by the acid content of the wine. Sometimes perceived as crispness, a wine’s acidity must be properly balanced; too much acidity and the wine tastes too tart; too little and the wine tastings heavy and uninteresting. Like body, acidity is more felt in the mouth than actually tasted, but it is critical to the overall sensation of how a wine tastes.
Astringency: Astringency is a puckering, dehydrated sensation that we get from some young red wines. This sensation is caused by something called tannins, which occur naturally in grape skins and seeds. Wine with an abundance of tannins is called tannic. In wine terminology, the opposite of tannic is soft. Because red wines are left in contact with the skin and seeds during fermentation, red wines are more tannic than white wines. Grape varieties vary in the amount of tannins they contain. As a rule the more fruity tasting grape varieties have the fewest tannins. For example Beaujolais Nouveau, made from the Gamay grape, is very low in tannins, while Cabernet Sauvignon has more tannins than most other wine grape varieties.
| Quick Classification | Taste Profile |
|---|---|
| Sweet, light body red or white | |
| Semi-Dry, Crisp, medium body white | |
| Drier, crisp, full body white | |
| Fruity, medium body red without noticable tannins | |
| Semi-dry, medium body red with soft tannins | |
| Dry, full body red with mild tannins | |
| Dry, full body red with pronounced tannins |
Below are detailed descriptions of the four characteristics used in the Quick Classification system. Clearly there are many more than four ways to classify wine, but these four are basic and will suffice for many wine drinkers.
Sweetness : Sweet is the opposite of dry, that is a sweet wine is called sweet and a wine that is not sweet is called dry. We typically assume that sweetness is cause by the presence of sugar, however what I like to call apparent sweetness can also be caused by excessive fruitiness. Even though the two sensations are very different; sweetness being noticeable on the tip of the tongue and fruit coming mostly from smell, both can be perceived as sweet.
Body: Body is our perception of what is called a wine’s weight in the mouth. Wines are described on the one extreme as light, implying little or no feeling of body or weight in the mouth, and on the other extreme as full bodied, implying a significant feeling of body or weight. Note that body is a feeling, involving the sense of touch, rather than a taste. Body is mostly correlated with alcohol content, the higher the alcohol content the greater the sensation of weight or body.
Tartness: Tartness is caused by the acid content of the wine. Sometimes perceived as crispness, a wine’s acidity must be properly balanced; too much acidity and the wine tastes too tart; too little and the wine tastings heavy and uninteresting. Like body, acidity is more felt in the mouth than actually tasted, but it is critical to the overall sensation of how a wine tastes.
Astringency: Astringency is a puckering, dehydrated sensation that we get from some young red wines. This sensation is caused by something called tannins, which occur naturally in grape skins and seeds. Wine with an abundance of tannins is called tannic. In wine terminology, the opposite of tannic is soft. Because red wines are left in contact with the skin and seeds during fermentation, red wines are more tannic than white wines. Grape varieties vary in the amount of tannins they contain. As a rule the more fruity tasting grape varieties have the fewest tannins. For example Beaujolais Nouveau, made from the Gamay grape, is very low in tannins, while Cabernet Sauvignon has more tannins than most other wine grape varieties.
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