1. Sight
Before smelling or tasting anything, look at the glass against a white surface, tilted, with good light.
- Color: in reds, it ranges from violet (young) to brick/brown (evolved). In whites, from greenish (young) to deep gold (with more age or barrel time).
- Intensity: how much you can see "through" the wine — a more opaque color usually indicates more concentration.
- Legs: the drops that run down the glass after swirling give a clue about alcohol and residual sugar levels — slower, more defined legs suggest more alcohol or glycerin.
2. Smell
Here you gently swirl the glass (to release volatile aromatic compounds) and smell at two different moments, which tell you different things:
First nose (without swirling)
The subtler, fresher aromas, before oxygen "opens up" the wine.
Second nose (after swirling)
With more oxygen contact, more intense and complex aromas emerge: fruity, floral, spiced, or aged notes (vanilla, toast, leather), depending on the wine.
There are no "correct" aromas: the goal isn't to guess the exact name of the fruit, but to identify aroma families (fruity, floral, spiced, mineral) and describe them in your own words. With practice, the vocabulary sharpens on its own.
3. Taste
The final step brings everything together and adds what you can only feel in the mouth:
- Attack: the first impression as the wine enters your mouth — sweet, acidic, dry.
- Acidity: the "mouth-watering" sensation a fresh wine produces; very present in young whites.
- Tannins: the dryness and roughness reds leave on your gums, especially young ones or those with heavy oak aging.
- Body: how "light" or "heavy" the wine feels in the mouth, comparable to the difference between skim milk and cream.
- Finish: how long the flavors linger after swallowing. A long finish is often associated with higher-quality wines.
Why this isn't just personal taste
Professional tasting uses standardized scales and methodologies — like the ISO 4120 standard for sensory difference testing — precisely to separate what's objectively measurable (color intensity, perceived acidity level) from personal preference (whether you like it or not). These are different things: a wine can be technically very well made and still not be the one you like best, and that's fine.
Practice tasting with real rigor
LagarLab's Tasting Room uses the same ISO 4120 standard and real statistical tests (Welch's t-test) as an actual lab — it's not just "pick an adjective."
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Frequently asked questions
What are the three basic steps for tasting wine?
Sight (looking at it against a white background), Nose (smelling it twice, before and after swirling the glass), and Palate (where everything comes together, adding the sensation in the mouth).
Why do you swirl the glass before smelling the wine?
Swirling releases aromatic compounds that were trapped in the liquid — smelling it again after swirling often reveals aromas that weren't there before.
Are there "correct" aromas you’re supposed to identify?
There's no correct answer. Each person identifies different aroma families based on their own experience and sensitivity; what does exist is a shared vocabulary of aroma families to describe them.
How is tasting made more objective, instead of just personal preference?
Through standardized methodology, such as the ISO 4120 standard, which separates objective measurement from personal preference. LagarLab's Advanced Tasting Room uses that same standard along with Welch's t-test.
What is wine sensory analysis?
It's the structured evaluation of a wine through sight, smell and taste, done in a way that can be repeated and compared instead of being just a personal opinion. In practice it uses trained panels, standard vocabularies and statistical tests. A classic one is the triangle test (ISO 4120): tasters get three glasses, two of them identical, and have to pick the odd one out, which shows whether two wines are really different. LagarLab simulates a panel of 10 tasters and this test.