How Long to Develop Your Tasting Abilities?

I have been drinking wine for a while and I have definately noticed my tastes developing. I am able to pick up many of the nuances I couldn’t when we first started, and wines I loved 2 years ago are now sad. We have been on tours/tastings in Mendoza, Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Napa, and Sonoma. After lots of practice, I still can’t pick out all the things I see so often described in reviews.

My question: How long did it take you to really start noticing all the little nuances and become comfortable in your descriptions? Any pointers besides drinking more to develop ones skills?

Best advice is to not worry about picking out what every “expert” finds in a wine. Taste perception is very personal and no two people are the same. Actually, it’s mostly in your sense of smell and it’s based on what smells you’ve experienced.
I suppose you could gather up some anise, vanilla, a cigar box, strawberries, etc. and try to memorize each but that sounds like too much work to me. :slight_smile:

I am right there with you. I have been trying to find a review I trust (many from folks on this board) then find the wine, then try and taste what they tasted.

I have been learning a great deal.

For instance I recently saw a thread here where someone gave his friends two different bottles of wine, one considered by experts a hightly rated wine, and another a less expensive but SMOOTH wine.

All of his friends rated the smooth wine higher than the expert rated wine.

He made me realize I was doing the same thing. I had recently picked up some BV reserve pinot, which when I tasted it at the vineyard, I was quite impressed with. However after reading that, and getting a few other higher rated pinots and doing my own taste test between them could see exactly what he was talking about. the BV lacked the multitude of flavors and tanins, and that tricked me into thinking higher quality.

Still much to learn.

I’ve been there. It’s really surprised me just how much my tastes have evolved.

Isn’t it fun when little light bulbs go off in your tasting experience? This is starting to happen more and more often for me. At first it was difficult to distinguish one white wine from another and now I am starting to taste differences from varietals produced from different regions. There is an awesome climate taste map in Andrea Robinson’s book, Great Wine Made Simple. This has opened my mind even more when tasting.

Probably the best thing you can do (either your self, or a large in-store tasting) is do a huge lineup of totally different wines in one go.

Daunting, yes, hard to do, yes, but you will see all at one time so many different flavor/palate/texture/smell profiles that it may then make more sense.

They don’t have to be great wines, just a really good, diverse, interesting mix, some older as well always a good thing…


Not a bad idea to get a few liked minded people together (as I often did when I was starting out), get them to bring a bottle or two, go buy a whole bunch of cheapies and then go nuts…

First thing I’d say is that it doesn’t matter so much, at least if we’re talking about flavors. What’s probably more important is to at least understand what all the structural elements refer to (tannin, acidity, residual sugar and so on) and to learn to detect them.

Second, re: the “become comfortable in your descriptions” part of your question, practice makes perfect. Write tasting notes for each wine you drink. After a while I found that some questions were arising naturally as I was tasting a wine, about flavor, structure, palate, length, etc. Your TNs will then become more and more detailed. This being said, I’ve barely written any TN in the last 5 years. I found it a worthwile exercise at first because it helped me know what to look for and practice my idenfitication skills, but nowadays I don’t think it matters so much any more since I know what I like.

Third, find a mentor who knows what (s)he’s talking about. It’s much easier to learn about acidity while tasting bottles of wine displaying different levels of acidity, than to try to match written words with your experience, especially since each bottle is different.

I knew I loved Burgundy from the first time I tasted them, fifty years ago. Rhônes, Italians, and Southern France came shortly thereafter. I’ve had a descriptive capability from the beginning, which I developed on Rbt. Parker’s board, and brought to fruition on Wine Berserkers.

This is great! Thank you for everyones advice!

I just started out and have been tasting and writing down what I taste. Sometimes it is just difficult to find the right descriptor for what you are tasting. That is usually the tough part for me.

I definitely agree that different people will have different descriptors depending on what they have tasted (food, fruits etc) so it is funny when I find a taste that is unfamiliar to people and I am never sure that is right (like rambutan or durian). It also takes awhile for your taste buds to recognise the different taste. It is definitely work to differentiate each taste, smell you are experiencing and commiting them to memory. It has been so much fun though! Yes the light bulbs!

Also, don’t worry about being so incredibly specific. For example, you might detect a floral component in a wine, but no specific flower comes to mind right away. Fine… right down that it’s floral. Add other adjective if they occur - - rich, sweet, light, etc. Same with most things - they fit into categories and if you can’t nail the specific item, jot down the category it’s in.

Some flavors you have to have had to get - currants, etc. Others are easy - cedar, cherry, etc. And I’ll second Guillaume’s recommendtion on getting familiar with how to detect structure, tannin, acid, etc.

I started drinking wines around the mid to late 90’s. I didn’t start trying to actually taste wine for a good 8+ years (around 2005). What I’ve learned that helped me was to focus on a specific region, varietal, or theme for a set period of time. Some examples: I drank mostly Oregon Pinot Noir for three months in the summer of 2006. As many different producers, price ranges, and tried to keep the majority of them in the same vintage (2004). By the end of that summer I felt like I knew and understood what to look for in Oregon Pinot Noir and I moved on to another region and varietal. It takes time to build an understanding of regions, styles, varietal specificity, and when you add aged wines into the picture it really changes. I would recommend finding an area you’re excited about now, taste as much as you can for a few months and then maybe cellar 3-6 bottles that were your favorite. The BEST advice anyone ever gave me was to buy wines that are meant to cellar & age even if you don’t like them. I bought a few '96 "tête de cuvée in that summer of 2006 even though I didn’t like Champagne at that time. By the time I did like Champagne I was glad to have them in the cellar. Your tastes will change with time. Assume that at some point you will like aged “old world” wines buy them En primeur when possible and you’ll have them years later when you’re tastes have shifted.

Also…finding a local tasting group can really help you learn more if you can taste with others that have more experience and hopefully arn’t pretensious jerks. I was VERY fortunate to taste with several people that had 20-40+ years experience early on and they were very supportive, helpful, and kind in their advice as we tasted together. Good luck!

I second the tasting group advice. I was very lucky to fall in with a tasting group where every member is more experienced than me and learn somthing every time we meet. Another thing that I would say is that experience helps. When I got into wine, I didn’t know what black currant was. I never detected vanilla. As a cat owner thought people were nuts to detect cat’s piss in sauvignon blanc. And as someone who grew up in the woods did not understand the wet leaves note of pinot. Fifteen years later, I have come to realize that those names are just shorthand rather than perfect descriptors. SB often contains the taste that wine-lovers call cat’s pee. Oak imparts the flavor that wine lovers call vanilla. Bordeaux occasionally has the flavor wine lovers call lead pencil shavings. And so on, and so on. Eventually you will have tasted enough that you will know that some flavors have wine shorthands and you will be able to identify and apply them.

Tasting group + Frequent Blind tasting = Accelerated learning

Worked for us as a tasting group. Once a week, every person brings a bottle, no theme, take turns as sommelier. Each person is responsible for describing one wine for the group and then open discussion.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a bit over-the-top and admittedly annoying, but he’s put together an entertaining video to assist people expand their palate and better understand flavor profiles. He goes through the process of tasting a variety of berries, spices, veggies, jams/currents etc. and compares those flavor profiles to varietals. It’s pretty interesting.

Being able to decipher the “mid-palate” is important on your wine journey.

Here is the link: How To Get Your Wine Palate Trained. - Episode #148 - YouTube

The answer: a lifetime. Our tongue, palate and olfactory senses change over time and as we program in more memory from past experiences, we also have greater recall of certain aromatics, etc. It`s a fun and wild ride. Enjoy the journey.

Palate recall is also an interesting thing…

I can be drinking a wine, and bang, the memory of it comes to me, and I know exactly where and when I last had it, and usually even what I was eating…

My wife does a similar thing (but not with wine), more like shoes and dresses…

I think this is crucial. You can only go so far tasting by yourself and reading. Comparing your experiences to a review can be tricky because wines show differently in different contexts – depending on how long they’ve been open, what food they accompany, and so on. The only way to really hone your palate, I think, is by tasting with other knowledgeable people, or at least with people who really focus on what they’re experiencing. Not many people really do that.

It depends what you want to do. If you want to be good at identifying wine blind, taste widely, blindly.

But what’s far more important to me is to find a group of like minded folk, and share bottles over dinner, and find out what you like. I don’t give a damn about trying to pick out five different fruit profiles in a wine and write some ott descriptive note.

I don’t see wine appreciation as a skill to be learned via a precribed method.

For me there are two things: First focussing, as John mentions. This is often not so easy, especially in a group which may not be so interested in wine, it tends to fade into the background a bit. That’s one way a tasting group can be very useful. The second is reading TNs, reviews, etc. so you have some idea what to look for and what turns other people on. Again, drinking with other more experienced people can help a lot (not that I’ve done so much of that). But in the end, it’s a personal matter, everybody has different likes and dislikes. Have fun!

Here’s one approach to developing your palette. Go to the grocery store and buy, jams/preserves, dried fruits, fresh fruits, chocolates, coco powder, herbs, spices, vegetables etc., etc. and smell/taste each one. Take notes while you’re sampling and try and lock the different characteristics into your memory.

If that’s too much of a bother then join a wine club. Go to tastings as frequently as possible and share your impressions with other members.