Tasting wine is “to taste, to taste something to examine its taste or seasoning”. But in the world of wine this word has a much greater meaning: it carries with it a series of procedures or “rituals” in which the senses come into play in an exceptional way in order to discover the aromas, tastes and textures that each wine contains .

On this occasion we will focus mainly on the types of tasting, each with a purpose and a characteristic modus operandi.

Probably the most popular is the blind tasting, in which the participants are unaware of the wine they are going to taste. The bottles are usually covered so that aspects like the vintage, the geographical area or the mark do not affect in the opinion of the taster before trying the wine.

They can start with a previously defined theme (eg type of grape, denomination of origin, add …) or do not provide any information about the wines to be tested (the so-called double-blind tasting).

The blind tastings are characterized mainly by the objectivity and impartiality of the person in charge of judging each wine, without being influenced by the geographical area, the winery in which it is made or its vintage.

On the other hand it is necessary to take into account the horizontal and vertical tastings:

The horizontal tasting is characterized mainly because during its development are tasted wines from different wineries but of the same vintage and denomination of origin. Therefore it is perfect to make an assessment about the producer and the quality of the grape used in the process of making each wine in a given geographical area.

And … the vertical tasting differs from the previous wine tasting during the course of wines from different vintages but from the same winery. In this way we can analyze its evolution over the years.

There is another way to taste a wine not as popular as the aforementioned, the diagonal tasting. In it are enjoyed and valued wines that share the same geographical area but come from different producers and vintages. This tasting procedure can be useful to check the evolution of the wines from a particular region and thus compare them with the rest of the wine regions.

If you are one of those who are still entering the wonderful world of wine there is a type of tasting perfect for you. This is called the double tasting. It is enjoyed by tasting the different wines with the labels discovered. Later the bottles are covered and the process is repeated to try to recognize and value each wine.

As we have observed, there are several ways to carry out a wine tasting, one for each moment, but they all have one element in common: the pleasure of tasting a wine.

¡Salud!