Topic: Wine-Evaluation

Get tips on how to properly taste and evaluate your homemade wines.

Feedback is critical for winemakers who are looking to advance their hobby and no one should be more critical than you. Learn some of the many roads you can take in order to better your skills at critically tasting your wines.

I apologize in advance for the lengthy response, but this is a fantastic question and I really wanted to flesh out my answer for you. You’re absolutely right to realize that tasting

Congrats on getting invited to your first ever wine judging! I’ve been judging wine competitions, both for home and commercial winemakers, for over 15 years now and they’re always a great way

Approaching food-wine pairings can be complex given the nearly endless options available . . . but there is a science to it. Learn the basics to matching a wine with a food course to impress even the sticklers in the group.

Using all your senses when tasting wine is always encouraged by wine evaluation experts, but make sure that you are taking in the whole experience and not simply breaking it down and compartmentalizing the elements.

So, stick with me for a little bit as I get a little philosophical for this one as the answer isn’t straightforward but necessitates a little rambling. My frequent readers will know

Feedback is one of the quintessential parts of growing and learning in this hobby. There are many avenues a hobby grape grower and winemaker can take for evaluation and advice, so make sure that you’re looking in the right spots.

Winemakers new and experienced will often compare different wines and make mental notes about the experience. For those that want to improve upon their wines, spider charts offer an easy-to-visualize evaluation of several sensory variables.

Those are a great couple of questions. Decanting, or the pouring of a wine out of its bottle into another, larger container (usually made of clear glass or crystal), is something that

I apologize in advance for the lengthy response but this is a fantastic question and I really wanted to flesh out my answer for you and readers that are following along. You

Though especially welcome in summertime, and especially tasty with regards to Pinot Noir, I break the “room temperature reds rule” year round and with many varietals to boot. In the depths of

Well, it seems like you have been paid a visit by a colony of Acetobacter, aka acetic acid bacteria. They love air, eat alcohol, and turn it into carbon dioxide and vinegar.

Terms such as “mineral taste” and “minerality” have entered the modern wine lexicon and into common usage probably by traditionalists in an attempt to link the equally ill-defined concept of terroir to

I just read the article you refer to, which seems to claim that “natural wine” (an ill-defined term, which in the article seems to mean “minimal sulfites added except at bottling” or

I say Toe-may-toe, you say toe-mah-toe . . . this sounds like a bizarre wine myth in the making that we should just quash right here. Though undoubtedly, swirling your wine glass

If you are of the opinion that yeast selection does not matter and that the only role of yeast is to convert sugar into ethyl alcohol (ethanol), you may have been missing

To make good wine one must understand what good wine is and, alternatively, understand and be able to detect wine faults. Anyone can learn to evaluate wine, and as a winemaker it

There certainly is something historically appealing about hoisting an overflowing chalice of one’s own homemade vinous deliciousness. In ancient times metal was a common material from which to fashion drinking cups. From

 Heading to wine country is a field trip for adults. You’ve got beautiful scenery, interesting people, new beverages to enjoy and an opportunity to get away from the hustle and bustle of

  Heading to wine country is a field trip for adults. You’ve got beautiful scenery, interesting people, new beverages to enjoy and an opportunity to get away from the hustle and bustle

Not long after I got started making wine I realized I was relying more than I had expected on core sensory concepts like sight, smell and taste to guide my winemaking activities.

Most of us make wine because we like to drink it. The drinking part is easy to master: just tilt your head back and swallow. The tasting part, however, is a little

The wine tasting technique that I describe in this article was developed over the last fifteen years out of sheer frustration. As a wine sales representative, I’ve made hundreds of wine presentations

Judging is highly subjective, and there are as many methods of evaluating wines as there are tasters. That’s a good thing. If wines could be rated objectively, we’d all be buying Microsoft