32 Chapter 2 Taste Basics and the Basics of Wine Evaluation
crystals on your tongue and experience where it impacts your tongue and inside your month
in general.
Saltiness is one of the primary taste components. Salt is vitally important in the sea-
soning of food items but, with few exceptions, it is present in wine at undetectable levels.
Because salt is a taste enhancer, you will come to learn its effectiveness in enhancing wine
and food pairings.
Acidity is present in food and wine. The right balance between sweetness and acidity
is vital to white wines, as is the correct balance of sweetness, acidity, and tannins to red
wines.^22 Your tongue reacts most strongly to acidity. Acidity creates a feeling of crispness in
wine when present in sufficient levels. The absence or lack of acidity in wine creates a flat
or ‘‘flabby’’ feeling in the mouth.
Bitterness is often confused with astringency. Astringency is created in wine through
the presence of tannin. Astringency is defined by the tactile sensation of dryness and rough-
ness throughout the mouth, while bitterness is associated with a bitter sensation on the back
of one’s tongue. When tasting bitter foods or solutions, you will notice how it affects your
tongue and mouth. Like saltiness, bitterness is much less important to wine tasters and is
usually present in high levels only in wines that have had substantial problems during proc-
essing or handling or in which the grapes were affected by a bacterial disease. However,
bitter tastes in food can complement or contrast with characteristics in wine. Bitter beverages
include products such as Campari or Angostura bitters. Bitter foods include radicchio and
the white pithy parts of citrus peels.
In daily eating and drinking, tea provides a great example of tannin. The next time
you drink a cup of tea, notice how it creates a slight puckery feeling in your mouth and
inside your cheeks. Then allow the tea to become cold and taste it again. Did the puckery
feelings increase? Now add some milk to the tea. Did the puckery feeling decrease? This
lessening effect illustrates the interaction between tannin and fattiness in food that features
in the classic relationship between young red wines and dishes made from beef or lamb.
Research suggests that the astringent characteristics in tannins increase with colder
temperatures. This could be one reason why red wines, which generally have more tannin
than white wines, are served at warmer temperatures than their white wine counterparts.
The astringent effects of tannin in wine can range from nonexistent to very high.SUMMARY
The food-and-wine pairing process combines tech-
niques derived from the general sensory literature, the
wine evaluation literature, and the culinary arts literature.
The heart of the process relies on sensory evaluation tech-
niques, defined as a systematic approach used to induce,
quantify, analyze and assess responses to food and wine
products based on what is perceived through the senses of
sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. This chapter pro-
vides an overview of this process as applied to wine eval-
uation. Wine evaluation encompasses a visual examination,
olfactory examination and taste examination.
When setting up a sensory tasting of wine or food,
it is important to consider both physiological and psycho-
logical factors that may impact the outcome. Some of
these factors include temperature, room lighting, extra-
neous odors, talking during the process, and time of day.
The exercises at the end of this chapter will arm you
with tools to clearly identify the primary taste character-
istics in wine and food (sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) as
well as to differentiate bitterness from astringency. The
wine evaluation exercise will allow you to reinforce pre-
vious experiences in wine tasting and provide a clear dif-
ferentiation of the most common wine varietals based on
color, smell, body, and taste.