Wine: Rating Your Favorite

-12/7/09 from wineandleisure.com and winespectator.com

What Makes Wine Enjoyable

Each of us is evolving in our personal cultural experience. Perhaps you too have come to the place where you’re ready to experience more adventure as a connoisseur. There is culture in wine. It can be found in the ritual of drinking it, appreciating the craft of the winemaker, and in the wine’s stimulation to our taste buds. And now, let us pursue the pure taste enjoyment of wine.

When we drink wine, our taste buds are stimulated in a unique way and the alcohol has a calming effect on the brain. Human taste has four components: sweetness, saltiness, acidity and bitterness. The acidity and sweetness in wine are the two factors that balance together to produce a pleasant sensation on our sense of taste. We taste the acidity with the middle of the tongue and sweetness with the tip of the tongue.

Wines with excessive acidity taste harsh; those with insufficient acidity taste uninteresting and their flavor does not linger in the mouth long enough. Tannins contribute to the relationship of bitterness on the tongue. If you’ve ever chewed into grape seeds, then you’ve tasted the dry bitterness of tannin. Wine with too much tannin is unpleasantly bitter. The right level of tannin has an effect of bringing all the flavors together with a good “grip” in the mouth. The various fruit-like flavors detectable in wine contribute nuances to the sweetness we taste. It’s fun trying to detect different fruit characteristics, such as berries, plums, apples, pears...

Our other senses are involved as well. Our sight enjoys the color and our sense of smell enjoys the fragrances. Much of a wine’s character is revealed only through the aroma it exudes. This adds richly to the dimensions found in wine.

Grape Varieties

There are many species of grapes, but most of the world’s wine is made from the Vitis vinifera family, of European origin. Wine grapes have various unique, signature characteristics. Check out the following varietal grapes:

How to Find Wines You'll Enjoy

1. Get to know the wine areas. Start with a familiar new world region like Ontario, California, Australia or Chile. See the Wine Regions section to get started.
2. Try some of top red and white varietals from each wine region and take notes as to which ones you like best and why. Pick them from the list in the box above.
3. Get to know the old world wine areas. Start with France and Italy. Learn the top wine regions of each and the specific varietals each region produces.
4. Get to know the specific wineries in each region that you like best.

This will take some time, but you’ll find it to be an interesting and educational journey. You need to try a few different reds and whites from each region to get a sense of where your taste buds' interests lie. Your palate will also grow in sophistication and preferences as you continue to journey the world of wine! In my opinion, most wine consumers need to move beyond Australian, Chilean and California wines. They’re in your comfort zone, I know. But move beyond them to the more exciting wine areas: France, Italy and Spain. You’ll discover history, pedigree and amazingly complex and interesting wines that will wow your palate. Be sure to get to know Bordeaux, the Rhone, and Chateauneuf du Pape. Don’t stop or linger in one spot in your wine journey before you discover the charms of these fine French wine regions!

How Wine is Made

Wine grapes, Vitis vinifera, grow easily in any temperate to warm climate. A solution of sugar and water develops in ripe grapes, and the skins easily allow the growth of natural yeasts. In the fermentation process, these single-cell organisms consume the natural sugar and changeit into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. This rather simple process has been observed and used for thousands of years in human culture. In the past hundred years or so, technology and new ideas from winemakers have played an ever-increasing role in the making of wine. It’s becoming more and more a science and an art.

Here are the basic principles of winemaking. The grapes are either harvested by hand (this is best) or with mechanical harvesters. Exposure to air should be kept to a minimum at all stages of the process. Sometimes powdered sulfites are sprinkled on the grapes prior to crushing to prevent too much reaction with the air. The fermentation usually takes place in open vats. Several processes may be employed to give the wine clarity: fining and filtration for example. Shortly after fermentation has ended, the wine is transferred to a settling tank where filtration and other clarification techniques may be used.

The Differences Between Red Wine and White Winemaking

There are significant differences between red wine and white wine production. Basically, red wine is the outcome of crushed, fermented grapes. White wine is the outcome of fermented grape juice (that is, no skins or meat of the fruit). Blush wines, out of interest, are made from red grapes that are made into wine as
though they were white grapes. The red grape skins add a bit of color and nutrients to the juice being made into blush or rosè, leaving a slight blush of red in the wine.

Red Wine

All grapes contain the same kind of green fruity-meat, but red grapes have red skins and in the winemaking process, there is a considerable amount of color, flavors and tannins that are imparted to the final product. After crushing, the red grapes, skins and all, sit in a fermentation vat for a period of time. Picture a huge plastic bin with a mixture of crushed grapes and juice with a layer of crushed wet skins on top. The skins tend to rise to the surface of the mixture, forming a layer on top. This top layer is frequently mixed back into the fermenting juice (called must). After fermentation has stopped, about one to two weeks later, the new wine is drawn from the vat. A bit of “free run” juice is allowed to pour and then the remaining must is squeezed, yielding “press wine.” The wine is clarified and then transferred to oak aging barrels so that it may mature. When the winemaker considers the wine ready, it is transferred to bottles and labeled.

White Wine

Right after picking, white grapes are put into a crushing machine. In the process, the skins are separated from the juice, an important difference over the red wine process. Some adjustments are sometimes made to the acid or sugar levels at this stage (the addition of sugar is called “chaptalization”). The clarified juice is then ready for fermentation.

Yeast is then added to the juice for fermentation. Before long the white grape juice becomes white wine. At this point, some further tinkering is usually called for: filtering and perhaps the addition of sweeter juice to round out the flavor. The wine is then aged by storing in oak or stainless steel containers, and after a few months, it is bottled.

Reviewing wines: Wine Spectator-

how do they rate your favorite?

Wine Spectator editors review more than 15,000 wines each year in blind tastings. Every issue of Wine Spectator magazine contains from 400 to more than 1,000 wine reviews with detailed tasting notes and analysis. They set stringent standards and rely on the proven ability and experience of their editors as tasters and critics. The following information outlines the guidelines they follow in order to maintain the integrity of their tastings.

Tasting Philosophy

What do they review each year?

• Each year, more than 15,000 wines from around the world are blind-tasted by their editors.

• The majority of these reviews are published in issues throughout the year, in the Buying Guide section of the magazine.

• Additional reviews are posted exclusively on their website.

• Wine Spectator primarily serves a national audience, and they therefore prefer to review
wines that are widely available.

Where do the wines they review come from?

• The majority of the wines they taste are submitted by the wineries or their U.S. importers.

• Additionally, they spend thousands of dollars each year to buy wines that are not submitted,
at all price levels.

Where do they review the wines?

• Tastings take place in their four offices, in San Francisco, Napa, New York and Tuscany, and in the vineyard regions of Europe. Each office has dedicated tasting rooms and staff to coordinate the tastings.

• The European tastings are organized and conducted at independent sites by Wine Spectator staff.  

Who reviews wines for the magazine?

• Each editor generally covers the same wine regions from year to year. These “beats” remain constant, allowing each lead taster to develop expertise in the region’s wines.

• Other tasters may sit in on blind tastings in order to help confirm impressions. However, the lead taster always has the final say on the wine’s rating and description.

• A taster’s initials at the end of the tasting note indicate that the rating and review were created by that taster in one of our blind tastings.

• Wines that do not include initials at the end of the tasting note are wines that were reviewed by two or more tasters. These tastings are conducted in the same blind setting and are monitored and guided by the lead taster for that region.

Special Tastings

While the vast majority of our wine reviews originate from blind tastings—in private, under controlled conditions and result in official scores, as described above and on our Tasting Format page, we occasionally review wines in other formats.

• Barrel tastings: Editors sometimes review unfinished wines in barrel tastings. These wine are scored in ranges (eg. 85-88 points) [our score ranges are 4-point spreads] to indicate that the ratings are still preliminary. Most barrel tastings are blind; when they are not blind, this is specifically noted.

• Unofficial tastings: Editors sometimes review wines nonblind in unofficial tastings, from their cellars or at restaurants, in their blogs and in our What We’re Drinking Now section, for example. Because these are finished wines, they are given scores, but are always noted as unofficial and/or nonblind (if applicable) in the tasting note.

Wine Spectator's 100-point scale.

• 95-100 Classic: a great wine

• 90-94 Outstanding: a wine of superior character and style

• 85-89 Very good: a wine with special qualities

• 80-84 Good: a solid, well-made wine

• 75-79 Mediocre: a drinkable wine that may have minor flaws

• 50-74 Not recommended