After having so much fun exploring my pallet at the Vaal Wine Show, I decided to extend my blog to writing reviews of wine too. I previously wrote a post on writing the perfect review which I use in my everyday life. Btu creating a list about reviewing wine was a lot harder than I thought. But here’s my take on it. Feel free to add in your comments.

Just like a food review, a wine review uses 3 of your senses: Smell, Sight and Taste. On a side note, I do call myself the Wine Snob but there’s just so much more appreciating I need to do of the wine industry before I can call myself an expert so elements of my review have been adapted from various blogs like Wine Folly and Odedi’s Wine Review as well as my personal experience and what I’ve picked up a wine tastings.

Smell

There are 3 ways that you can smell the wine to start picking out the first flavours. Since each nostril can pick up different smells, make sure that you smell the wine fully. you can first pick up the fruity flavours and the floral flavour. Some deeper smells include the smokey, cloves, vanilla etc. Give it a rating out of 5.

Sight

Before even looking at the wine, rate the labeling. This is most simplest one but the hardest to guide someone because everyone has their own preference. You might light simplicity and vintage while I like overdone labels with plenty of detail. Give it a rating out of 5. 

The second part of sight is the wine itself.If the wine is poured correctly into your glass, there should not be any bubbles. To test the water content in the wine, you tilt your glass to the side and look at the top layer. The “thicker” the layer, the more water content there is in the wine and generally it means that the wine is of a lesser quality.

Next, you can see how much sugar there is in wine using this technique. Swirl the wine in the glass so it runs around the glass. Then let it settle. Now, watch the legs. The thicker the legs, the more sugar the wine has. That’s something I picked up the past weekend.

Those don’t need to be rated as they just get you prepared for the taste.

Taste

Here’s the aspect that every one has a different opinion of. It is sometimes harder to explain but as your pallet gets used to the taste of wine, you will see that naturally you can start distinguishing flavours and being able to articulate them.

BODY: When you focus on the taste, you’ll be thinking about how the wine feels your mouth. The body is perhaps the most obvious note and it’s very important to mention because it helps build the profile in your mind of the wine you’re tasting.

TANNIN: Tannin can seem tricky, but it’s easier if you focus on texture. Does the tannin have a lot of grip to it? (does it make your lips stick to your teeth?). Does the tannin fill your mouth with delicate tiny prickles?

ACIDITY: Acidity is how tart or puckering a wine is. For instance, a wine with high acidity (low on the pH scale) will have acidity similar to a lemon or lime, whereas lower acidity wines are closer to the light acidity of a watermelon.

Give the entire taste a rating out of 10. 

Now you have a rating out of 20 for the wine.

Adapted from Odedi’sWine Reviews is the rating scale:

• Less than 13 points is not worth buying
• 14– 15 points is average
• 16– 17 is excellent
• above 18 is exceptional

Wine Folly clearly shows the difference between a useless review and a really great one.