Wine Pro's Cliff Notes

How to evaluate the grape juice you're drinking....

Wine Pro Aaron Pott lists and explains ten characteristic elements that can help you compare and evaluate the wine your drinking, or help you describe the wines that you enjoy. My own current list is ten also, but less nuanced........ red, white, sweet, dry, fruity, cold, warm, jug, box, on sale, so this is a big help......

The question that I get asked more often than any other is, "How do you taste wine?" or its many variations, such as "How can I taste wine like you?" or "What are you looking for when you taste wine?". It's not easy for me to answer these questions. I have been making wine for over 20 years now, and the exercise of tasting, of sensory analysis has become so automatic and precise that I rarely deconstruct it to think where it comes from. For the last two weeks I have made an effort to try and pick apart what I look for and I have come up with a list of ten attributes that I find to be very important.    Full Descriptions.....

Typicity

Miles' sessions were not typical of anybody else's sessions. They were totally unique. HERBIE HANCOCK

"Typicity" is not an English word, but it should be. In French they call it typicité, which my dog-eared Larousse dictionary describes it as "The ensemble of characteristics that make a food product unique". If you are drinking a Pinot Noir Typicity is what helps us to recognize it as a Pinot Noir. It is also what tempers the urge to overdo a wine, to obliterate its natural characteristics. Typicity is best served when the winemaker translates flawlessly the poetry of the vineyard into the wine without fuss and ornament.

Sense of Place

Complexity

Integration

Elegance

Length

Balance

Power

Texture

Pleasure

Does it bring me pleasure? If the answer is "yes," then you can start thinking about why and then you can start understanding what you like in wine and not what other people tell you to like.

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