The principal stage of tasting is that which is often referred to as gustatory analysis. In point of fact, the term “gustatory” is incomplete when referring to all the perceptions one is aware of in the oral cavity, because the sense of taste with its four (or five?) flavors is only one of the three senses involved when actually tasting a wine (or indeed any food or beverage). Many sensations are perceived by one’s sense of touch, just as it is also wrong to talk about a “taste of chocolate” or “taste of lemon” because the aromatic perceptions of chocolate or lemon (and of all other aromas) are not sensed by the receptors in our tastebuds but by those in the mucous membranes of our retronasal passages (as explained above).
Taste
There are four flavors perceived by specific tastebuds in different parts of our tongues. Even if the theory of the geography of taste (exactly where these various tastebuds are on our tongues) is not entirely cut and dried as at first thought, we can nevertheless affirm – at least to simplify matters – that sweetness is perceived mainly on the tip, saltiness and acidity principally on the sides and bitterness at the back of the tongue. For some years now there has been talk of a fifth flavor, umami, which is very much akin to the “savoriness” of dishes in oriental cuisine and which refers specifically to monosodium glutamate (present, for example, in stock cubes), but in the West we are still somewhat skeptical about considering this a flavor in its own right.
The progressive scale of intensity in the four fundamental flavors may be considered to be as follows:
- sweetness: dry, medium, medium-sweet, sweet, cloying
- saltiness: insipid, not very tangy, tangy, salty
- acidity: flat, dull, fresh, crisp, acerbic, tart, aggressive
- bitterness: slightly bitter, almondy, bitter, very bitter
Also in the group of gustatory sensations are the derivatives of the principal flavors, such as sweetish, acidulous or bitterish, normally used to temper one’s evaluation of the aftertaste (gustatory sensations that return after swallowing or spitting out the wine).
Texture
In the mouth, apart from the strictly gustatory sensations, we may also perceive a number of sensations that have todo with our sense of touch.
These sensations may be subdivided into the following categories:
- (actually)tactile: these are those perceptions in the mouth that derive from the mastication of solid foods, with impressions such as hard/soft, substantial/fragile, brittle/elastic, soluble/chewy, but they can also be extended to drinks as sensations linked to the density of the liquid (viscous/fluid, oily/smooth or fatty/runny) or its richness in extract (hollow, thin, light, medium-bodied, full-bodied, substantial, robust, heavy)
- chemical: these are sensations deriving from the reactions of our nerve endings (for example, of the trigeminal nerve) in contact with certain chemical substances that are present in the liquid or food: piquant, prickly, effervescent, metallic and astringent sensations are part of this group
- thermal: these are sensations that have to do with an imagined perception of warmth (deriving from a high level of ethyl alcohol and higher alcohols) or from a perception of cool freshness.
(Retr)olfactory sensations
The sense of smell is involved once again in the “oral” phase of tasting thanks to the retronasal passages. The volatile molecules imprisoned in the liquid, once it is in one’s mouth, are liberated due to our moving the wine around and taking in air, as well as the heat and humidity of our mouths. These molecules then reach the olfactory epithelium by means of our retronasal passages, giving rise once again to perceptions similar to those of smell.
First take a little wine into your mouth to get it used to the taste and then take a bigger sip. Hold the wine first of all in the front of your mouth and then release it into the rest of the oral cavity. The elements you should take into consideration are all of those outlined above, and in particular the wine’s overall structure, its balance, the intensity of the retronasal sensations (aromas) and its persistence.
By overall structure we mean the concentration, texture and body of the wine,resulting from all the substances that make up its extract (polyphenols, fixed acids, salts, sugars, glycerin).
By the balance of a wine we mean the relationship between its “softer” elements (alcohol, glycerin, residual sugars) and its “harder” ones (acidity and, in red wines, astringency).
By intensity of the retronasal sensations we mean all the sensations you perceive indirectly after swirling the wine around your mouth and swallowing it. We should not forget, in fact, that the sense of smell plays a fundamental role in the overall sensations that we perceive in our mouths; the easier these impressions are to perceive and identify, the more intense and precise the retronasal sensations will be.
Lastly, the wine’s persistence is an indication of how long its gustatory and olfactory sensations last: the longer they linger, the greater the wine’s persistence will be. One can talk about gustatory/tactile persistence or about persistence of the aromas, depending on whether one is dealing with the length of actual taste sensations (sweetness, saltiness, acidity, bitterness) and tactile ones (astringency, prickliness, warmth, freshness) or those perceived retronasally (fruity, floral and vegetal sensations, etc.).
The palate should confirm the descriptors we found on the nose and also give us new ones, which again recall those analogies we listed for the olfactory assessment. It is the aromatic sensations, in fact, that are the dominant ones: try tasting anything you like whilst holding your nose. The overall sensation that you perceive will be considerably less strong, in the same way as when you have a heavy cold.
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