Why you should taste wine without prejudice 

I host a lot of tastings at my winery, especially through the summer. My region (Roussillon) is more popular with holiday-makers than wine enthusiasts, so the majority of my visitors are ‘normal’ wine consumers,
not experts or connoisseurs.

I find it interesting how different people describe the wines. It doesn’t only reflect their level of knowledge or their experience of wine. It shows how much they are able to detect and how much importance they place on aromas and flavours. It is also a measure of their ability to relate what they experience in words. My visitors are tasting the same wines, week after week. Yet they describe them differently. I know that the weather and time of day can affect taste, but I always serve them at the same temperatures: whites from a normal fridge and reds from a wine cave.

The weather has a bigger influence than most people imagine, professional wine critics included. Heavy, humid days dull the aromas of the red wines. High winds (even though we taste inside) seem to put people on edge, distracting them. Ditto heatwaves and heavy rain. If I could, I would only hold tastings on fresh, bright days. Even so, there is still a lot of variation in how individuals perceive a given wine. Within the same group, people will say widely different things based on their experience, their prejudices, their personal likes and their ability to express themselves.

Identifying aromas is dependent on our memories. The sense of smell is most closely linked in the brain to memory. We all have different memories and different levels of importance or vividness attached to them. Which memories are triggered when someone smells a wine will usually dictate how they describe it. One person might get a distinct aroma of elderflowers while another is sure they can smell apple juice. Neither is wrong. Only when someone tries to come up with esoteric aromas do I question their sincerity. If someone says they are smelling flint, white nectarine, hibiscus and wild fennel in the same wine, I feel they are probably trying to impress rather than describe what they can actually smell.

A memory bank of aromas

The reason wine experts are better at identifying and describing wines is because their memory banks are full of wine aromas. Wine experts like to guess what grape variety and region a wine comes from just from reading a tasting note. “Blackberries, chocolate cake and menthol. Ah, you must be describing a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley!” That sounds a bit crazy to normal people. So I don’t think we can draw any conclusions based on what people say they can smell. 

But when it comes to taste and texture, it all becomes more subjective and judgmental. What we experience is a combination of taste – sweetness, acidity and bitterness – and sensation – heat, viscosity, dryness and body.

It’s surprising how few people can differentiate between sweetness and acidity. A lack of acidity is perceived as sweetness and an excess is perceived as dryness. This is because sugar balances out acid. Many are also influenced by the aroma of something they associate with sweetness and imagine a wine contains sugar when it doesn’t.

An example is dry wine made from the Muscat grape, often used to make sweet wines. People insist they can taste sweetness when there is none. Dryness is confusing because we use the same word ‘dry’ to describe a wine with no sweetness, as well as a wine with mouth-drying tannins. In French, it’s slightly clearer because people often use the words sec (no sweetness) and séchant (drying). Tannins and their texture are the cause of most differences in opinion about red wines. People have individual preferences and tolerances towards tannins in red wine. Young people in general have a low tolerance and find any drying, grainy texture to be a negative. 

That’s why most young wine drinkers start on light reds such as Beaujolais or sweetened, softened reds such as the big Californian brands. I see tannin as an acquired taste. Some people never acquire it. When we talk about wine appreciation, I believe it’s mainly the ability to appreciate tannin and its textures.

Very often I will have a group where those who appreciate red wine will enjoy the texture of a red, while others pull a face and say they just don’t like it. In truth, they are just able (and happy) to say whether they like or dislike a wine they taste. Sometimes they will say it’s too sweet, too acidic, too tannic, too oaky, etc. 

Sometimes they can’t put it into words at all. Despite not knowing much about wine, they often hold the most inflexible opinions. They dislike all wines from a certain country, made from a certain grape, aged in barrels, or above or below a certain alcohol percentage. In most cases, those opinions are unfounded. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard someone say they hate something about wine, only to like it when they are not told beforehand what it is.

The next level of appreciation is to remark only on the relative strength of the wine. For me, this is an indication that they can’t really identify any of the more subtle flavours, textures or qualities of the wine, whether because they can’t detect them or because they lack the vocabulary or confidence to express themselves.

Taste wine without prejudice 

Wine appreciation isn’t just about experience and the ability to analyse what we taste. It’s also about open-mindedness. The more prejudices people hold, the less they will be able to appreciate wine. That applies to novices as well as seasoned consumers. Making assumptions about a wine from the label, the colour and the price is all very natural. Allowing those assumptions to override or heavily influence what you actually experience when tasting the wine is a sign that you are not really appreciating it.

I liken people with these prejudices to those faddy about food: those who won’t eat seafood, dislike pulses, can’t stand peppers or ask for restaurant meals to have items removed. It’s difficult to become a connoisseur if you are faddy.

I would rather have visitors who know little but approach each wine with an open mind and an inquisitive palate than those who have plenty of knowledge but too many preconceived opinions and a narrow range of preferences. This comes out when faced with a style of wine that is new to them. The inquisitive taster will reflect on what they are actually experiencing in terms of aromas, tastes and sensations. The more set in their ways will either dismiss the wine as nothing special or else will say it’s not for them.

Some like to show their knowledge of wine. They may compare the wine to another appellation or a famous estate. They may try to guess the percentage of a grape variety in a blend or say how long it spent in barrels. Sometimes they get things wrong, but often it adds to the conversation. Some display their ignorance as a virtue, which can be annoying if they are not open to learning anything. However, nothing is more disconcerting to me during a tasting than someone who says nothing.

Jonathan Hesford has a Postgraduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology from Lincoln University, New Zealand and is the owner, vigneron and winemaker of
Domaine Treloar in the Roussillon.

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