The Briery Reserve
Tasting method
A repeatable way to taste a wine at home: order, temperature, glass, light, and the four things worth writing down.
Edition of
Why a method at all
A wine tastes different at eleven degrees than at nineteen, and different again in a tumbler than in a stem with a narrow chimney. Without a method, two tastings of the same bottle are two different experiences, and a reader learns nothing that holds. The method below takes twenty minutes and needs nothing but a glass, a jug of cool water, a kitchen thermometer and a pencil.
The order that works
Taste dry before sweet, light before full, young before old, and cheap before dear. The palate carries the last wine into the next, so an aromatic white will erase a delicate one served after it. If a bottle has been open more than a day, pour a small measure first and give it two minutes in the glass before judging it.
Temperature by hand
Red wines that are rich and plummy want about seventeen degrees; lighter reds want fifteen; aromatic whites want eight to ten; sweet wines want six. A room at twenty-two degrees will warm a bottle by about a degree every four minutes, so a red pulled from a cool floor is often closer to right than a red from a warm shelf. A wet cloth and ten minutes in a draught is a legitimate chilling method.
What to write down
Four lines are enough: the grape or the blend, the place, the vintage, and one sentence that is only true of this bottle. Write what you smell before you taste, and what the wine does after you swallow. If you cannot smell anything at first, wait; if you cannot describe it, name the fruit or the place it reminds you of. A note that says "warm stone, sour cherry, and a dry finish" is worth more in six months than a score out of a hundred.
What the method leaves out
Scores, ceremonies and stemware collections. The aim is a decision at the table, taken calmly, with the food already in the room.