Wine Tasting Notes

This guide has been produced for all levels of Wine Lovers.

For the beginner, it may provide a meaningful way of recording your impressions and then, slowly building up your knowledge until you are confident.

For professionals, it is a great way of organising your thoughts and may be useful when judging competitions or writing articles.

Either way, have fun with it!

This introduction is courtesy of a number of people more expert than me and you can see the attributions at the end of this introduction.

Introduction

Wine writers differentiate wine tasters from casual enthusiasts; tasters attempt to give an objective description of the wine's taste (often taking a systematic approach to tasting), casual enthusiasts appreciate wine but pause their examination sooner than tasters.

The primary source of a person's ability to taste wine is derived from their olfactory senses. A taster's own personal experiences play a significant role in conceptualizing what they are tasting and attaching a description to that perception. The individual nature of tasting means that descriptors may be perceived differently among various tasters

The following is an incomplete list of wine tasting descriptors and a common meaning of the terms. These terms and usage are from Karen MacNeil's 2001 edition of The Wine Bible  and the Wine Folly unless otherwise noted.