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http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Local Issues Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage Hot Topics Most Viewed Forum Photo Galleries Video Readers Polls O-Zone Online Games Movie Preview Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Featured Galleries: March 6, 2007 The basics of judging wine By Lorn Razzano Tidings Correspondent Lorn Razzano Archives Tuesday January 16th Tuesday January 23rd Tuesday January 30th Tuesday February 6th Tuesday February 13th Tuesday February 20th Tuesday February 27th Tuesday March 6th Tuesday March 13th I got a few very fun remarks on my Newport Seafood and Wine Festival column as well as many questions about professional wine judges. There seems to be quite a bit of curiosity about how to become a professional wine judge and what it takes to sit through a few hundred wines in a couple of days without your palate fizzling out. How, did one person ask me, does someone go from white wine to light red wine to heavy, tannic red wine in a few hours of tasting and not fall over? Another asked me about techniques involved in tasting wine so that the palate remains fresh throughout the judging. OK, here are a few answers to your questions; One of the best, if not the best tool to evaluate wine is the nose. As in food, we can determine freshness, off flavors as well as great flavors from smelling. So few wine drinkers take the time to smell the wine before they taste it. This is very true of white wine and rose' wine because these wines are so very often served way too cold to evaluate. The colder the wine the less aromatic the nose (bouquet) that comes from the glass. (Never have your wine put into a chilled wine bucket.) Therefore half of what you are paying for gets lost in the chill of the wine. Second, and I have seen this happen in countless restaurants, many places serve too much wine in the glass. The closer to the brim the less air space there is to swirl the wine and open its flavors. If the glass is of the wrong dimensions we can also get the wine lost in the glass as well. Wine judges demand swirl friendly glasses and require that the "pour" be small enough to agitate the vino so that the wine "opens up" as the tasting progresses. This leads us to the ability to asses many wines regardless of the type of grape, white or red sitting before us. Because our nose is so acute (well, mine's not that cute) in sensing wine, our palate does not need to do the job. The less wine that hits the palate the sharper this tool remains. Bad wines never hit the palate, the nose eliminates the poor wines before the palate has a chance to do its job. Perhaps 20 percent of what I judge never passes between my lips. If the wine indicates poor winemaking from the nose there is no need to go further with that particular wine. It can be really tough to put a lousy wine on the palate then move forward to give the next wine a fair judging. The nose is the king of wine tasting. Spitting the wine out is a big part of evaluation. Spitting the wine out after swirling it on the palate is not only essential to wine judging but it is also required. There is absorption on the palate when one tastes this many wines over a two day period. Every judge's station has a spit bucket on the table and they become very full after just a short time of judging. A person is assigned the job of lifting the buckets and pouring them out by request of the judge or by some sort of timing during the judging. The last thing to understand about judging is the fact that most judgings will continue the same panel of judges year after year, that is if the panel works well together and moves along rapidly but effectively throughout the course of the event. Nothing is worse than a judge who cannot get with the program. Some of the newby judges try to make an impression on the judging by talking about every wine on the table. An extra minute per wine can easily become two hundred minutes in a two day event. I have seen commercial wine judges booted from further wine judgings for passionately defending a loser wine in the face of four very decided judges who had long ago decided to eliminate the wine. In commercial wine judging time is fatigue. The longer the wine is on the palate, the longer the discussions, the less sharp the palate and fine judgment becomes. This is the real heart of the matter in all commercial wine judgings. Well, I hope I answered some of your questions, See you next time! Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising: Debt Help Inkjet Printers Payday Loans Free Ringtones Debt Consolidation Security Systems Debt Relief New Hampshire Primary Advertisement: Copyright © 2007 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved. Del.icio.us