How do you 'describe' a wine?

How do you describe an experience, or a sensation, to someone who hasn't lived it?

That's the challenge when you try to describe a wine.

Some people go with the 'fruit salad' description. Something like, "Dried cherries, cedar, sandalwood, tar, treacle tart, cinnamon and vanilla."?

Others, the chemistry description, "6.2 g/L acid, pH of 3.6, RS of 5 g/L."

While we use things like this when making wine, we've never found them useful in talking to customer about our wine.

What we found best was keep it simple and focus on fundamental aspects of the wine that most people get when they taste, regardless of experience and training. Hence, the Dancing Swallows Flavour Profile Diagram.

A 'visual' snapshot of the wine

  • We're not the first to use this sort of wine description; there are a number of them out there on the internet.

    We looked at a lot of them, and then compared them to what we actually say when describing our wines. The result was 6 key 'dimensions'. We don't always talk about all 6: some are just not that descriptive of a given wine, but sooner or later, we talk about them all.

The six dimensions

Flavour Intensity

  • This tells you how 'strong' flavour is.

    Baco is 'strong' - when you taste it you have no trouble tasting something big and distinct. Other wines are 'delicate' and you have 'listen' carefully to what you are tasting.

    Neither is better - it all depends on what you want.

    NOTE: 'By the book' there are 2 'intensities' in wine tasting: 'Aroma intensity' (what you smell) and "flavour intensity" (what you taste). We've found many people have trouble separating these 2 sensations, so we've combined them into an aggregate scale.

Fruit

  • All wine taste ‘fruity’ to some degree. Some wines are so dominated by fruit flavours people call the ‘fruit forward’. In other wines, more earthy flours emerge – sometimes stoney minerals, sometimes mushrooms, other times forest floor.
    Ironically, the flavours don’t come from the exact fruit you taste, or mushrooms, or leaves – they come from naturally occurring chemical compounds in the wine that remind of you what you seem to be tasting. It part of the wonderful magic of wine tasting.

Sweetness

  • For the most part this is obvious – some wines taste sweet because there is sugar in them. However, a high level of acid can balance out sugar when you drink it. And some wine can be so ‘fruit forward’ they trick you brain into thinking they must be sweet.
    For some reason, wines that are not sweet at all are called ‘dry’. Most DSV wine are on the dry end.

Acidity

  • All wine is acidic to some level – it’s what makes wine so refreshing and good to pair with food. It can also balance sugar and alcohol. At the same sugar level, a more acidic wine will taste less sweet and more refreshing and well-balanced compared to a cloying, non-acidic wine.
    White wines are generally more acidic than red. The exception is the light-bodied red wine Pinot Noir characterized by a high level of acidity.

    The level of acid is key on wine pairing to the get the right level of ‘palate cleansing’.

Tannins

  • Mostly found in red wines, tannins are a group of phenolic compounds found in grape skins, seeds, and stems. They get extracted into the wine in the wine making process.

    The level and maturity of tannins causes a ‘drying’ sensation when you drink it (like black tea).   Lower levels of and older tannins can make a red wine taste ‘smooth’, at higher levels and less aging that can be very dominant.

    Tannins are also what make red wine a could pairing with red meat – they bind to the fats and refresh your palate for the next bite.

Body

  • Body means how ‘full’ the wine feels when you drink it, also called viscosity. Several things make up body of a wine. Mostly it’s alcohol that gives the wine viscosity. Other factors are the grape type, the climate of the vineyard, and residual sugar. Based on the body, wines can be light, medium, and full-bodied.

A Final Note

It is really important to remember: "Wine is like music".

You don't need to know, for example, what chord the bass player is playing in the bridge of your favourite song, you just need to enjoy listening to it. And you just need to know what kind of wine you enjoy.

Our Flavour Profile is just an attempt to help you find wine you may like. What's the best way to find out which of our wines you may like? Come taste them!

And always remember , it's the same as music: You like what you like!!

Come taste some DSV!