First of all, the color of wine should match the year and grape variety. Different grape varieties will certainly produce different colors of red wine. In addition, the older the year, the lighter the color of red wine will be, from the earliest purple to orange. In this module, the perfect score is 5. Due to the application of modern technology, ordinary wine can get 4 points or even 5 points.
From left to right, the years are getting older and older.
You can preliminarily judge the quality of a wine from its color. Dark wine is generally not bad, and dark wine is definitely not good wine. In addition, observing the color of wine is the most effective method to judge the year at present. For example, a red wine that is more than 3 years old is still very bright in color, so there is a problem. In short, remember that the older the year, the darker the color and the more prominent the yellow tone.
2. Smell: the aroma of wine.
The aroma of red wine requires purity, fragrance and durability. In this module, the perfect score set by Parker is 15. Pure aroma means that the aroma of red wine must conform to the characteristics of grape varieties, such as the green taste of New World Cabernet Sauvignon and the gasoline smell of Riesling. In other words, this red wine is made from Cabernet Sauvignon, so it must have the proper aroma of Cabernet Sauvignon, otherwise the aroma will be impure. When you are blind, you can also judge the grape variety of red wine by its aroma.
Purity is only the basic requirement for aroma. Aroma (rich and pleasant aroma), lasting and changeable aroma is essential for a good wine. For small white wine, it is difficult to remember the special aroma of each grape. How to judge? It can actually be simplified. Just remember, no matter what the aroma of this red wine is, at least you should have the desire to smell it. That smelly and pungent wine is either of poor quality or bad.
3. Product: flavor and aftertaste.
After reading and smelling, the next step is to drink. After all, wine is for drinking. Parker gave this module a perfect score of 20. It was evaluated from four dimensions: taste balance, complexity, layering and aftertaste.
Balance refers to the perfect combination of acid, tannin, alcohol and sugar. After careful tasting, you can drink sour taste, sweet taste, astringent taste and the stimulation of alcohol, but you won't feel that one taste is particularly prominent, so as to achieve a balance in taste.
Complex refers to the rich taste of red wine, which combines a variety of flavors. Especially the red wine aged in oak barrels will evolve into vanilla, cigar, cigarette, coffee, leather and other flavors.
For a good wine, layering is a must. A new wine can be toasted without layering, but a good old wine must have a rich layering. So what is stratification? For example, if you open a bottle of Lafite, it will give you a strong berry flavor at first. With the passage of time, the flavors of tobacco and cedar gradually emerged, and finally the flavor gradually matured, and the flavors of cream and coffee came to the nose. Like an onion, peeled off layer by layer, this is the layering of red wine!
taste
4. Aging potential.
As the saying goes, the older the wine, the more fragrant it is. Red wine is no exception, although the alcohol content is only a dozen degrees, and red wine drunk by the elderly over twenty or thirty years can be seen everywhere. Only old red wine will taste mellow. For the module of aging potential, Parker set a perfect score of 10.
The so-called aging potential not only refers to how long the red wine will not go bad, but also includes the time to make the red wine reach its best state. For example, a certain red wine reaches the best drinking period when it is aged at 10 ~ 15. After this time, the quality of the wine will decline, so the aging potential of this wine is 10 ~ 15.
Most red wines on the market have no aging potential, which is the patent of high-end red wines. For most wines with 100 yuan, the module of aging potential can only get 2-4 points.