The Barossa Valley – A Guide to Wine Tasting   

In the Barossa Valley wine is an important part of the culture.  Wine tasting is the art of examining and evaluating a wine by taste, smell, and sight. Professional Barossa Valley wine tasters use a large list of in depth terminology to describe the flavour, aroma, and general characteristics of a wine. In the Barossa Valley there are many wonderful cellar doors where you can taste the wines produced. Wine tasting tours are a very common occurrence throughout the entire Barossa Valley region, and is a great day out spent with a large group of friends or as a more intimate and romantic day out for two in the Barossa Valley. 

With wine tasting there is 5 basic steps in the process. These are colour, swirl, smell, taste, and savour. What a taster is evaluating is the clarity, varied characteristics, integration, expressiveness, complexity, and connectedness of the wine.  

Before tasting the wine, try to determine if the wine is heavy or light. With red wines usually the darker or deeper in colour the wine, the heavier it is. With white wines, the sweeter the wine, the more dense and thick it is. This is visible by swirling the wine around the glass, if thick viscous streaks are left down the side of the glass, then it is a sweeter wine. 

Firstly the glass should be held in the correct manner. For a chilled white wine hold the glass by the stem. For a red hold the bowl of the glass in your palm with the stem between your middle two fingers. 

Colour: once you have studied the wine for it being light or heavy, you then look at its colour. You do this by tilting the glass slightly on its side, and look at the wine against a white background. The colour of a wine may be yellow, gold, pink, purple, black, and the list can go on. The colour of the wine indicates what type of grape it is made from, and also indicates whether the wine has been aged in wood. The clarity of the wine indicates its age. The younger the wine the more clear it is (you can see through it easier). With a heavy aged red you will not be able to see through the wine. If a wine is cloudy this can indicate that there is something wrong with it. 

Swirl: to swirl a wine, you rotate your wrist so the wine rolls up the sides of the glass. Swirling a wine not only gives an idea of its heaviness, but also ‘opens up’ the wine. By allowing air to mix with the wine this intensifies the flavours and aroma of the wine. Swirling the wine leads us to the next step, the smell. 

Smell: the smell or aroma of a wine is also known as its ‘bouquet’, among wine connoisseurs it is also known as ‘The Nose’. The swirling of the wine in the glass opens up the bouquet and its aroma is captured within the glass, and is an important factor in perceiving the taste of the wine. Inhale deeply with your nose close into the opening of the glass to get a true sense of the aroma of the wine. The bouquet of a wine can also tell you its faults, such as cork taint or oxidisation of the wine. 

Taste: tasting a wine only takes one to two sips at a time. When tasting the wine roll the wine around on your tongue before swallowing. Sucking in air through pursed lips while the wine is still in your mouth will open up the flavours of the wine further on your palate. It is in a wine’s taste and bouquet that its quality is judged. When tasting a wine try to determine its flavours, texture, weight, and the overall structure of the wine. If tasting several wines it can be best to spit out the wines instead of swallowing them, as this will affect the taste of the latter wines tasted. 

Savour: savouring the wine involves identifying the way the wine feels, smells, tastes etc once swallowed. It is often at this point of savouring the wine that the true aromas, bouquet, quality, texture, and complexity of the wine is discovered. 

Wine tasting is an enjoyable and interesting experience. Be sure to visit one of the many beautiful Barossa Valley cellar doors to come to appreciate and learn more about the art of quality wine making. Your local Barossa Valley winery will be more than happy to help and assist you with your wine tasting experience.