Last week, I talked about increasing your sense of smell. Since smell makes up 80% of our tasting experience, improving our sense of smell is incredibly important to enjoying wine. But hey. There’s still 20% left. So today, I’m going to talk about increasing your sense of taste. I’m sharing Wine Folly’s recommendation for a wine palate training exercise that you do in your home.
What You’ll Need
Bring together:
- 1 bottle of dry red wine
- 1 black tea bag
- 1/2 a lemon
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp vodka
- 4 identical wine glasses that will be shared + one wineglass per person
- a notepad and pen
Getting Ready for the Tasting
Pour 3 ounces of red wine in each of the 4 wine glasses. Add to each glass:
- Black tea bag
- 1/2 squeeze of lemon
- Sugar
- Vodka
In a fifth glass, pour red wine. This will serve as your control glass.
The tasting will help you identify your own individual sense of the primary tastes in red wine: tannin, acidity, sweetness and alcohol.
Black Tea Bag
The tannin from the black tea should dissolve into the wine in about 10 minutes, and then you can take the tea bag out. Take a taste of the control wine and feel it on your tongue by swishing it around before you swallow. Then, take a small taste of the black tea wine without smelling it.
You should notice two primary aspects of tannin: bitterness and astringency. “Bitterness will be the most prominent in this experiment (due to the high bitterness of tea) but you should also feel a drying, astringent sensation on your tongue. This is astringency from tannin and it should feel like fine sandpaper when you brush your tongue to the roof of your mouth. In wine, astringency is often described as fine-grained to coarse or grippy tannin. Most tannic wines will have increased astringency, but the bitterness will not be as intense as black tea.”
Lemon
“The acid in the lemon will increase the acidity in the sample. Take a taste of the control wine and feel it on your tongue by swishing it around before you swallow. Then, take a small taste of the lemon wine without smelling it.
- Does the wine taste lighter or bolder?
- How does the increased acidity make your mouth react?
- Does the wine taste more bitter or less bitter?
You will notice at least 3 differences with increased acidity. One, the wine won’t taste as bold as your control wine. Two, the increased acidity will make your mouth water and pucker. And finally, it will bring out more of the wine’s natural bitter notes and astringency. An additional feature that some will notice is the wine will have a longer tart and tingly finish.”
Sugar
Stir the sugar into the wine. Take a taste of the control wine and feel it on your tongue by swishing it around before you swallow. Then, take a small taste of the sugar wine.
In small amounts, sweetness doesn’t taste sweet, but it does increases the fruit flavors of a wine and add an oily texture on the aftertaste.
Vodka
Take a taste of the control wine and feel it on your tongue by swishing it around before you swallow. Then, take a small taste of the vodka wine without smelling it.
The vodka wine will have increased spiciness that will make your tongue have tiny prickles all over. This will make the wine feel thicker (bolder) on your palate.
There is so much to cover on enhancing your sense of taste that we will cover this some more next week.
