How to Become a Better Wine Taster

Become a Better Wine Taster with The Paso Robles Wine Club

All along California’s Central Coast, form Paso Robles Wine Country to the Santa Ynez Valley and beyond, the rolling landscape is awash in the colors of spring. Plum, pear, and apricot trees are in full blossom, wild daffodils and iris peek from every nook and cranny, and the hillsides are carpeted with patterns of yellow, orange, purple, and red wildflowers. Eye candy, to be sure, but there’s no better time than now to use your senses to become a better wine taster. Paso Robles Wine Club members regularly sip hand-selected wines from Paso Robles Wine Country, but to really taste the nuances in wine, you’ve got to work on developing your sense of smell.

Here are a few tips on how to become a better wine taster:

Drink Less; Sip More: Even the best wine tasters in the business can develop a lazy palate. Drinking more wine doesn’t equate to becoming a better wine taster. In fact, it can dull your palate if you aren’t actively thinking about what’s in your glass. Adding to the challenge, the older we get the fewer taste buds we have and the duller our sense of smell. By sipping wine and consciously thinking about it, you’ll trigger the synapses in your brain, increasing your analytical thinking skills, and noticing the nuances of the wine.

Embrace Your Surroundings: Ever been stumped when tasting wine about how those ‘super tasters’ come up with so many spot on adjectives to describe what’s in their glass? It’s true that some people do have very advanced palates, but it’s also true that the more scents and tastes you consciously process, the more adjectives you’ll have to draw from when tasting wine. So, go ahead—stop and smell the flowers, the grass, the earth; the first hour after a good rain—along with everything else in the world. The more you smell—and think about what you’re smelling, the better your gustatory and olfactory senses.

Listen Up: Wine makes conversation flow and that’s a good thing when you’re looking to have fun. But, if you’re trying to learn more about wine and become a better wine taster, you need to be aware and intellectually involved in not only the information the tasting room hosts provide, but also the ‘tasting notes’ of the other wine tasters around you. You won’t taste every nuance in wine, but when someone points something out to you, you will likely have that ‘Ah, ha!” moment of your own. Engaging with other wine tasters and talking about wine will help you develop a better palate.

Enjoy spring in Paso Robles Wine Country. The Wine Wrangler can take you on a memorable wine tasting tour and along the way, you can enjoy the beautiful landscape and witness the vineyards as they awaken from winter and a membership in The Paso Robles Wine Club will bring the best wines of California’s Central Coast right to your door.