Eating different foods: When Cristom Vineyards communications director Raechel Sims started tasting wine, she would hang out in the produce aisle. She would buy any strange fruit or vegetable she came across, everything from dragonfruit to mushrooms. By tasting new things, she developed a wider arsenal of flavors to identify in the glass. Try tasting different fruits on their own and take notes. You'll notice you can spot new and different flavors when you hit the tasting rooms.
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# You don't have to be a fancy pants to taste wine. Here are the basics

Statesman Journal



A stuffy tasting room with snooty suits pouring expensive wine can be intimidating and make tasting wine feel seriously inaccessible. But no one started out an expert.

When the lady next to you at the bar is picking out flavors of Marionberry jam, mushrooms and baking spice and you taste — grapes, don't despair. Just practice.

### Let's get started

It's important to keep an open mind. You don't need to decide immediately how you feel about the wine or try to decide if something is good or bad. To start, just pay attention to a few factors.

Hold the glass: Always use the stem so you don't warm the wine with your hot bod.

Take a look in your glass: What do you see? Hold up a glass to light, if you can, and note the color. Is it dark, rich, hard to see through? Or is it like colored glass, easy to see through?

Give it a sniff: Your nose does a lot of the heavy lifting in identifying flavors. Do you smell a fruit? Now give it a swirl. Your nose doesn't need to take a dip in your wine, but make sure it's close enough that you can pick up important notes (notes is wine-speak for aromas or flavors).

Take a sip: Try sipping a bit of wine with air in your mouth so you can aerate the wine itself. Swirl it around your mouth for a moment, so the different parts of the tongue (and their respective taste buds) can get some quality time with your wine. After a few seconds of pondering time, feel free to swallow.

In every glass, you'll find:

Body: Alcohol gives wine weight. If a wine feels heavy, it often has a higher alcohol content. Wine Folly compares body to that of milk: Light body wines are like skim, and full-bodied wines are like whole milk.

Fruit: Where does it fall on the scale between fruity and savory? There's no need to list fruit and vegetables. Most people know when one thing tastes like fruit. Down the scale, it starts to taste like dirt, earthy, like a root vegetable. You might even taste sort of funky notes, which people often attribute to fungus or mushroom.

Acid: Michael Schuster's "Essential Winetasting" defines the range of wine from flat to biting. If a wine doesn't have much acid, it could be described as "flabby," calling out for lemon the way a fatty fish does. It's flat and isn't perky like a green apple. If the wine has medium to high acid, it can make your mouth water, often described as "juicy." Too much acid might make you wince like sucking on a lemon.

Tannin, astringency or texture: Found primarily in reds, tannin comes from the skin, seeds and stems of grapes. In the mouth, tannin might feel like sucking on a cotton napkin, like all the moisture has left your mouth, like your tongue is suddenly furry. Tannin is one of the factors that contributes to texture. Similar to body, texture has a lot to do with how the wine feels. Is it suddenly hard to move your tongue against the roof of your mouth? That can be referred to as tough or compared to cotton. Or does your tongue feel slippery? That's called silky or soft.

### How do I practice?

Identifying flavors or qualities of wine is not a gift, the result of Dionysus' thumbprint on your nose or a sprinkle of wine magic from the grape fairies. It takes practice and experience — if you're willing to put in the time.

If you want to get better, try:

Drinking comparatively. Buy four different bottles of wine and taste them next to each other. If you're just starting out, you can get four different reds or four different whites, just to start to notice the basic differences between a chardonnay and a riesling. Then, try to keep one control in mind: You can choose four of the same varietal (four chardonnays, for instance), four wines of the same region (Willamette Valley pinot, anyone?) or four wines of the same winery or vineyard. Open them all at the same time, and taste a little bit of each one.

Eating different foods: When Cristom Vineyards communications director Raechel Sims started tasting wine, she would hang out in the produce aisle. She would buy any strange fruit or vegetable she came across, everything from dragonfruit to mushrooms. By tasting new things, she developed a wider arsenal of flavors to identify in the glass. Try tasting different fruits on their own and take notes. You'll notice you can spot new and different flavors when you hit the tasting rooms.

Tasting alone, without distraction: Paying attention is key. If you're only drinking in a busy tasting room with friends, you'll lose some of the intricacies of your wine. Try tasting at home: no music, no TV, just you and the wine. You'll notice more, and you'll focus through the finish.

Hosting a tasting party: While tasting alone is good, purposefully tasting together is good too. Throw a handful of bottles in paper bags and see what you and your friends notice. Think of it like a study group, but better: There's booze.

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