The Wine Lover: Tasting wine, part 2: Taste for yourself

Last time, I discussed how to identify and understand wines by color, clarity and smell. Tasting is the most important part, of course, and there are some characteristics that will help explain why certain wines taste and feel different in your mouth.
A wine’s “body” is essential and one of the easiest things to identify. Wines that are typically full-bodied include cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel and syrah. A couple of light-bodied wines are sauvignon blanc and, oftentimes, pinot noir.
The best way to understand body when it comes to wine is to think about milk. Consider the contrast between whole milk, 2 percent and nonfat. A full-bodied wine feels the same as whole milk, and a light-bodied wine feels like nonfat. The body of a wine can help the taster determine where it comes from and what foods to pair with it.
Sweetness is a little more difficult to identify, because it is frequently mistaken for fruit, or vice versa. When a wine is quite sweet, like a late-harvest zinfandel or sauternes, it is easy to tell that it’s high in residual sugar. When it has only a little residual sugar, it is called “off-dry,” and the sweetness is more difficult to differentiate from fruit and citrus.
The way to tell the difference is by feel. Fruit and citrus will have more acidity and will feel intense in your mouth. Sugar coats the outside edges of your tongue. Identifying sugar also helps you pair wine with food, and it is a clue to the body of the wine, as well.
Acidity is my favorite characteristic. When a wine is high in acidity, it will be intense in your mouth. Another telling characteristic is that it makes your mouth water. If you take a sip of wine and swallow and your mouth is watering terribly, it definitely has a lot of acidity.
Acidity and sugar by themselves are not necessarily good things. A wine with lots of sugar and low acidity will be flabby and unpleasant. A wine with high acidity and no residual sugar will be very intense and difficult to drink. One of the most important things in a good-quality wine is balance. Body, residual sugar and acidity must be in balance for the wine to be superior.
The last characteristic to consider is tannin. Tannins are found only in red wine and come mostly from the oak in which the wine is aged. High-tannin wines include nebbiolo, Bordeaux blends and sometimes merlot. Tannins dry your mouth out and make your mouth feel “sucked up.”
If you take a sip of red wine and feel as if you just chewed on a two-by-four, then it has a lot of tannin. Tannins are very common in red wine and, like acidity, help it age well.
When you taste wine, it is good to look for and understand these characteristics, because it will also help you find what wines you prefer. The more you recognize the differences, the more you will begin to enjoy and grasp what makes a fine wine and what creates balance. Cheers!
• Austin Twohig is a certified sommelier and partner in The Santa Cruz Experience, which conducts winery tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact him at [email protected].