The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement

Quick tips: Six steps to becoming a wine expert

Ruby Lohman

Instant pro: Research has found wine novices have the same smelling and tasting abilities as experts.
Instant pro: Research has found wine novices have the same smelling and tasting abilities as experts.Supplied

Chewy tannins, a tobacco nose and expressions of terroir: it makes perfect sense to wine experts, but to the everyday human, this kind of language can be baffling, amusing or just plain intimidating.

But there is a relatively universal system to tasting and describing wine – and according to research from the University of Sydney, you can start to get the hang of it in less than a day.

In his PhD, completed earlier this year, psychology researcher Alex Russell set out to discover whether wine novices could become wine experts. Over six years and 31 experiments, novices smelled and tasted a range of wines. They were asked to identify grape varieties, aromas and flavours, and describe them using common wine adjectives.

If they identified an aroma or flavour incorrectly, they were told the correct descriptors. Using this technique, the novices showed significant improvement in a matter of hours, Russell says.

Advertisement

According to Russell, wine novices have the same smelling and tasting abilities as experts – it's the way experts process the information that sets them apart. As long as you have a working nose and mouth, you too can become a wine expert.

Based on Russell's research, here are six tips to help you on your way.

1. Hold your own blind tasting sessions

Get a few friends together for a blind tasting, and sample some bottles side-by-side. This is much more effective than relying on your memory to compare the wine you're drinking now to one from yesterday or last week.

As part of your tasting session, smell various herbs and fruits with your eyes closed and try to identify them. This will help you learn how to identify odours without being able to see their sources.

Advertisement

Wine writer Mike Bennie has this great advice for tasting wine: "Look to colour for a start … it can give you some info on the winemaking or age of a wine. Don't judge a wine on colour though; so many interesting wines may not look like textbook colour-ways for wine.

"Aromas are great to hook into next … Most people make easy association with scents like roses, lavender or pepper, but the taste is more difficult to lock down. I like thinking about what the wine feels like in the mouth in terms of weight and feel. Light-bodied, medium-bodied, full-bodied? Does the wine feel smooth or is it firm with tannins?"

2. Do the time – at least four hours

Russell found that novices who smelled and tasted wines for an hour didn't learn much, but if they continued for another 30 minutes they showed signs of improvement.

After four hours they had a decent understanding of aroma descriptors and could correctly identify many of the wines' smells.

Advertisement

3. Add your own flavours

If you have trouble recognising smells and flavours, Russell offers this tip: add your own flavours to the wine to intensify its existing characteristics.

"Not sure what peach tastes like in a chardonnay? Add a little bit of syrup from a can of peaches to your next glass," he says. "Then you'll get an idea of what the flavour tastes like in wine. Gradually reduce the amount you put in until you can find that flavour without any additive."

4. Expand your horizons

Make an effort to taste wines made from different grapes, regions, climates and countries, and notice the differences in aroma, taste and structure. If possible, order wines by the glass at bars and restaurants so you can taste and compare a variety.

Advertisement

"Take notes, talk with friends, taste as much wine as you can, expand your repertoire and be adventurous – and above all, have fun!" Bennie says.

And as Russell points out, sticking to cleanskins won't make you an expert.

"Although price isn't the best indicator of quality, which is fairly subjective, it is often the case that more expensive wines better reflect where they come from," Russell says.

5. Take it beyond the tasting

Sadly, drinking lots of wine isn't enough to make you an expert. You also need to learn about things such as grape-growing, wine regions and climates - and the wine-making process. And that takes time.

Advertisement

"You can't learn some things quickly, like nuances of sub-regions or … single vineyards and how they might respond to season … but all that comes with time and patience and interest," Bennie says.

6. Learn the lingo

Russell says that to become a real wine expert, you need to become familiar with wine language so you can link a wine's characteristics with recognised descriptions.

But don't get carried away. As Bennie says, "Overloading descriptions of wine isn't as interesting as who has made it, what their philosophies are, where it has come from and maybe something anecdotal around the wine.

"That's the end game for knowledge about wine – not pushing a shopping cart through the fruit and vegie aisle and compiling a list of descriptors."

From our partners

Advertisement
Advertisement