The senses of wine

The senses of wine: color

The color of a wine tells us many things
Not only if it is white or red. Simply by looking at the visual appearance of the wine we can know many other things. In a red wine, purplish or purple colors indicate youth, while brick or orange colors tend to show aging and aging in wood. Wines that have a higher degree and density leave glyceric tears in the glass. With our eyes we can also perceive if a wine is transparent or more opaque, and if it is sharp and bright. And the bubbles? They are the carbon that sparkling wines have, the smaller they are, the finer and more elegant the wine is!

The senses of wine: aroma and flavor

Smell and taste: the protagonists of wine tasting
Sight tells us many things, but sometimes it can also fool us, just like in real life! To assess good wine, we smell it carefully and then put it in our mouth and taste it. In the nose, in a white wine we can often detect aromas of flowers or white fruits; in a red wine we will find notes of red or forest fruits, or of spices such as cinnamon or peppers … We can also find that the wines have smoky touches or that of minerals … And in the mouth, apart from the flavours, we will also perceive if it is light or velvety, if it is very short or if, on the contrary, the flavour remains in the mouth in a long finish.

The senses of wine: wine sounds

Wine does not speak … but the world of wine is full of sounds!
The ear does not participate in wine tasting, but there are a lot of sounds that accompany the journey from the vine to the pouring of the wine in the glass: the “snip” of the scissors in cutting the branches during pruning season, the old tread from grapes or modern presses, the “boiling” of fermentation, the “clink” of the bottles on the bottling line … to the familiar “pop” of when we open a bottle and the pleasant noise of the service in the glass. Can you hear them and recognise them?

The senses of wine: touch

With the mouth and with the hands
The world of wine offers us a wide range of tactile sensations. In wine tasting, the tongue and palate play a key role in detecting whether a wine has a certain harshness – it is astringent -, if it is excessively warm and even abrasive -it is alcoholic-, if it is unctuous, if it glides without friction and therefore it is fluid, or if it has volume and fills our mouths. With our hands we can also perceive the roughness of the vines, the fineness of the wooden barrels, the cold of the glass from which the bottles are made, or the different textures of the lands where vines are grown in Castelló.