Sight : Appearance & Colour >>> Appearance Viscosity: “legs” or “tears”. Swirl your glass so that the wine rises |
 |
up the glass, and some of the
liquid will cling to the sides of the glass after the wine has settled,
gathering to form droplets which then run back down the sides. If the
wine has a high degree of alcohol or a high proportion of natural sugar
in the wine after fermentation, there will be more “tears” and
longer they will take to form.
Colour
The best way to describe a
wine’s colour is the depth and hue.
Depth refers to the degree of colour; dark red or pale red,
for example. It is usually examined from directly above, and then with
the glass tilted.
Hue refers to the colour of the wine. It appears relatively
uniform and difficult to define when viewed from above. It is easier to
see with the glass tilted and against a plain white background.
With the glass tilted there are two colour sections to
describe: the rim and the bowl.
The rim is always watery at its very edge. This watery
extremity widens as the wine ages and loses colour. A narrow rim
indicates youth and wine extracts from small grapes with thick skins, as
a result of dry and sunny conditions. A wider rim suggests a higher
ration of juice to skins during fermentation. This could be the result
of a higher yield of grapes, thinker skins, or less colour in the skins
from a cooler, wetter growing season.
Rim colour always starts as a bluish-purple in newly made
red wines, turning red and then brick coloured as the wine matures. The
degree of “browning” is more an indication of relative maturity than
of actual age in years.
 |
 |