Ever wondered how Steve at work can always pick up a hint of citrus and lingering pepper and all you can smell is wine?
Either you're tasting wine the hard way, or you might be up against a Supertaster...Firstly, there's an easy way and a hard way to taste wine: If your wine is cold or young it can be incredibly difficult to pick up any flavours at all. This is known as a “dumb” wine but there's a way to smarten it up sharply.
Next time you're up against a particularly tricky wine, make sure you breathe in before you sip, hold your breath while you swirl, and then breathe out through your nose after you swallow the wine.
You can break the rules even further by holding the glass at the bulb instead of the stem – quelle horreur – this will warm the wine in your palm to tease out even the most terrified terroirs.
If you've already tried the advice above with little success and “Steve” can taste all 24 tasting notes on the back label, there are two things to bear in mind:
1) Supertasters are a real thing – some folks just have more Fungiform papillae than others (think apartment blocks for taste buds).
2) Even Supertasters can't taste more than 7 flavours at the same time. Maybe “Steve” had several sips to develop his bouquet, maybe he's a Supertaster, or maybe he just got hold of that back label before you started tasting.
At the end of the day, wine shouldn't be about hide and seek. It's about enjoyment. You can spend your life tasting the finest wines in the world and not one of them will ever come close to that bottle you shared under the stars once, but you never remembered the name - and that's okay! In our experience, the right time affects your enjoyment just as much as the right wine, but you have to know what you like.
There's a wine for every palette, now finally there's a show for every wine.
Come find out what tickles your Fungiform papillae at the TOPS at SPAR WINESHOW.