[MUSIC] Welcome back everybody. I'm assuming that you have your tasting set up and nice white background paper, good lighting, a couple of glasses. Let's go ahead and taste through step by step the first two wines that you bought, the white wine and the red wine. I'm going to go ahead and pour. Notice by the way that I have my wine's bagged. Of course I know what they are but, in another situation I might not know what they are and it's important that I don't know what they are at this point in time [SOUND] [SOUND] Okay my mouth is watering already. So let's just start with the systematic evaluation. Each of these two lines. I want to mention something that's probably self evident. But, in this series of modules we're breaking out the various steps of sensory evaluation. But when you actually are tasting a wine and now sitting down and formally taking notes. All of these various sensory segments really are overlapping. If you think about, when you walk up to a glass of wine or somebody's pouring it for you. You'll probably are already smelling it. I can smell the glass from here. When you're having a look at the glass. To visually evaluate it. You're already smelling it. When you go to smell, it you're still looking at it, aren't you? So vision and all faction are overlapping when you go ahead and taste it you smelling it's still ortho nasally and retro nasally. So the sensory impressions kind of all run together. But what we will do is we'll walk through these wines one at a time. And step by step and look at each section separately. So the first thing we're going to do is our visual evaluation of the wine. And the if you have a good bright light handy, you might actually lift the glass up with that light in the background. Maybe even tipped it a 45 degree angle and see what you can see and what you're looking for here is wine clarity. I can actually see some bubbles in this wine. That may or may not be important later on in the flavor in my mouth. But on my tasting notes I'm going to write bubbly or gassy or CO2. Primarily though I'm looking at whether not through in this sediment or any crystals in this wine. This one looks actually very clear or in fact I might in my notes say that it’s brilliant. The next thing were we going to do is to examine the color of this wine and to do that I'm actually going to bring the wine down and hold it at about 45 degree angle with my white table cloth or white paper background. And have a look at the color. White wines, I am giving you some of ideas about the range of colors. White wines range from a very clear or almost watery look. To very pale straw, some people prefer to say pale yellow. Pale straw, medium straw, light gold and darker and darker. So, that's the important thing that was to, is to bring the glass down at a 45 degree angle so that you can actually see the light that's bouncing back through that liquid. The next thing we're going to do is our first quick sniff assessment of this wine. I'm going to give it a little bunny sniff or rabbit sniff. kind of like that. And I'm going to say to myself, yes, this wine is okay to proceed. This wine is sound and fresh. So let's go ahead and delve in and see what else is there. So I'm going to give it a little stronger swirl from time to time you'll see me even put my hand over the top of the glass to see if I can trap the maximum amount of aromatics. And then bring it up to my nose and sniff. [SOUND] Several sniffs. And now is the time I'm going to be thinking about what are the specific aromatics that I'm finding in this wine. Am I finding floral aromatics? Am I finding fruitiness? If so which kind of fruits? Citrus fruits, stone fruit, tropical fruit. You and I have different wines of course but so it's not necessarily instructive to tell you what I'm finding in my wine. But this is the range of things that we want to look for in our wines. Are there any minerality notes? Does the wine smell like wet stones? Does the wine smell musty? Does the wine smell like vanilla or oak or wood shavings? Does the wine smell like butter? Does it smell like cupcake frosting? Does it smell like a cookie dough? What the various would or buttery melt might be in this wine. I'll just mention that in the case of the wine that I choose it's a simple white wine. It's going to little bit over viciousness, a little bit of tropical fruit and virtually no woodiness or butteriness at all. The next thing we're going to do is take a little sip and this is our first sip and by the way let me mention if this is our first wine of the flight or the first wine of the day. We might want to actually take a little and rinse and spit. A lot of times, if our mouth is not accustomed to wine at that moment, we'll have a lingering flavor from something else. Like, our coffee or our tea. Something that was in our mouth prior. Probably the worst thing that you can have in your mouth is the flavor of toothpaste, if you brush your teeth. So very often you'll see either tasters will taste a neutral wine at the very beginning, before they concentrate on their flight. Or in this case, I'll just take a quick sip. Swish it around and spit it out. Now my real first tip is going to be a little bit bigger sip, and I'm going to concentrate on the basic taste. And you remember the basic tastes, sweetness, sourness, which refers to acidity, or bitterness, if any. [SOUND] So those are the thoughts that are running through my mind. There is no sweetness in this wine. If there were a slight amount of sweetness, I might say slightly sweet or off dry or sweeter. There is a fair amount of acidity in this wine so I'll make notes about that. And there's no bitterness in this wine. This is a white wine and white wines rarely have any bitterness but you always want to look for it because sometimes bitterness can come from wood aging or how the grapes were handled prior to fermentation. I'm going to take another sip now and really swish the wine around, maybe gargle a little bit in my mouth drone some air hopefully without choking. And I'm going to be thinking about aromatics again. I'm going to remember the things I smelled when the wine was external and well, as on my palate, I'm going to be thinking do I smell the same things. Do, I smell different things, additional things? So let's go ahead and do that. With pencil in hand, I'm going to writing. I mean writing constantly. Anything that pops into my mind. Anything I'm smelling, orthonasally, retronasally, take notes. Don't forget to take notes as you go. The things that occurred to me when I tasted this wine was that the wine tasted much the same as it smelled. But a little bit simpler. In other words, instead of a lot of specific details, I got kind of an overall impression net of how this wine had previous smelled, but now on my palate. Now I want to think about finish or persistence of taste. And I'll have to say that my particular case my wine finished very very short. No sooner have I spit it out then several seconds later the flavor on my palate is kind of a distance memory. So this wine had a short finish. There's nothing inherently good or bad about that. It's just the case of this particular wine. And it's important that I note that in my note-taking grid. I'm going to pause for a moment and then turn my attention to the red wine.
