Is the sip and spit method enough to evaluate a wine?

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Seriously, wine WAS made for accompanying a meal shared with good friends, I find that sip and spit works to get some fleeting impressions about the most obvious characteristics of a wine, but one can get fooled by wines made to seduce precisely in such circumstances. This is whi so many wines that impress under these conditions can be so disappoionting once you take them home.

It is also hard to separate each wine from the previous when you do a series of sip and spit. Sure, pros do it and some of us fake it, but if you love wine there is nothing more boring. More than six and I lose interest.

Some wines that rate poorly at the sip-n-spit can turn out marvellous a few hours later or the day after, once they get some air.

One of the pleasures of drinking wine at the table (other than the matching thing, which I enjoy immensely), is to see how the wine changes in your glass as time goes by. I always keep some in my glass for later, even much later.

HAve fun

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

I really can't agree guys.

In casual ad hoc tasting, sip and swallow is nice. Not that the act of swallowing itself enhances any taste perceptions. It MAY however affect some olfactory perceptions which admittedly have an important part to play in the enjoyment of wine. In "serious" tasting, which for me means tasting 6 - 10 wines for buying case quantities for the cellar, sipping only is mandatory as after the 4th or 5th tasting my brain is getting increasingly insensitive to my taste and olfactory messages.

I can't really say that I've been disappointed with wines that I liked at the tasting but didn't like as much when I got them home. True, some haven't developed as I might have judged they would but hey, that's part of the enjoyment of this sport.

As for rating points, can anyone seriously postulate that a particular reviewers rating of 96 is materially better than a 94 or 95 on any given day or even time of day? All those high ratings say to me is "Hey, try me too." My palate and brain, in their ongoing journey of learning, are always the final judge....... Hmmmmm. Did I also mention my purse?

I personally think it's an insult to the wine to spit it out (What? I'm not good enough to swallow!?) and part of the fun is getting buzzed. Who goes to non-alcoholic wine tastings? I just have to remember to sip, not really drink.

Leo Bueno wrote: Wondering what your take is on the technique of evaluating a wine by the typical one sip and spit method, used of necessity at wine tastings.

I find that one sip can be used to rule out a bad wine, but it's not enough to fully appreciate the good ones. In other words, wines that are merely good upon sipping at first later get better the more of them I drink (i.e., don't spit), while others do not

So, it looks to me that to fully evaluate a wine, one has to drink it.

So, it looks to me that to fully evaluate a wine, one has to drink it.

I agree. When I took my wine exams a few years, I was taught to use the swill and spit method to evaluate the wines, and to help choose those that one should "spit backwards"!

Peter Taylor

Ok, I'll be odd man out and come to the defense of spitting. For enjoyment, I obviously prefer to drink wine, following the evolution in the bottle. But......

1) I have limited funds to spend on wine. I often take the opportunity to go to large store tastings, or trade events (I know enough ITB folks to get in to most). These are usually daytime, and I don't want to get snockered. Besides, if I swallow I really would lose some analytical ability after a while (some of these tastings feature 200 wines, and I might try to taste 50-60 I'm interested in. Occasionally you see someone who doesn't spit there, it's a sad sight. I regard these occasions as research for my financial good, not as pleasure.

2) Similarly, I occasionally participate in rather large verticals or horizontals. I think we had 29 2000 Bordeauxes at one, and I'm planning a Gruaud vertical where we have at least 19 vintages. In those situations, I drink more than at a trade tasting (adn have a grand old time), but I still don't want to drink THAT much. So I'll spit the ones I like least, so I can fully enjoy others.

I tend to put disclaimers on my notes from trade or store tastings, since I would never claim that 1 oz pours are the best way to fully explore a wine. But, for my purposes, a small pour and a subsequent spit is still a better guide to MY tastes than any critic. And even without swallowing one gets a pretty good idea of tannin and acidity levels, fruit profiles, oak levels, etc.

You're not the only one. Wine-writing being my profession, spitting is the only method when you write-up comparative tastings.

M.

Tasting fatigue is real enough. Well designed experiments to evalute foods, including wines, by a panel of people require that the tasting order be randomized for the different panel members. For a good evaluation of a single individual, he or she must repeat the tasting on several days with a randomized order of tasting.

To reduce tasting fatigue, pros tasting a huge variety of wiines must do what they can to avoid tasting fatigue. Spitting can help. Tasting lighter and more mature wines before young inmature ones and sweet ones can help. Some water and plain bread can help. Also remember a pro often is tasting wines that are very far from being mature. Very few are going to like a harsh, young, top Bordeaux or vintage port that still is in the cask or just bottled. What the pro must do is try to guess how the wine will taste when mature enough to be good drinking. Here past experience with wines from a property at various stages of development is quite important. Of course one also needs to know if important changes have been made in a property. Some wines are very difficult to evaluate young - for example Mouton-Rothschild.

For store tastings of many wines that are ready to drink, you may need to do what works for you to avoid fatigue. Then you can buy single bottles of your top picks. After detailed evaluation of the single bottles at home, you can then purchase more of the ones you like best.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

I pretty much agree with everything you have said except the last sentence. I go to a lot of tastings where between 50 and 1500 wines are poured. I spit the wines that I think are not worth my time. However, I often find after spitting that I have second thoughts so I sip again and try to remember to spit. There is a fine balance that we all have to find of evaluating the wines, enjoying the event and remaining upright. (at least until we start our drive home ;-) )

Salut/Hi Leo Bueno,

I've just read through most of the posts so far.

le/on Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:48:53 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I think the key phrase here is "used of necessity".

I go to quite a number of tastings, some of which may include well over 100 wines. It is a physiological fact that (sensory fatigue aside) alcohol has a numbing effect on the palate, which limits the number of wines that can be properly tasted to about 5 or 6 if you're drinking them.

So, if you want to be able to go on tasting all day, you HAVE to spit.

But it's equally true that wine was made (as Michael Tommasi said) to be drunk, and much of the best, made to be drunk with a meal. So it is certainly true that to get the best out of wine, you have to treat it as it was intended.

So those of us who "taste" as opposed to "drink", do so, if we're wise, knowing that we're doing a different thing. As I said in my articles about Riedel glasses, sometimes you need/want to analyse a/some wine/s and sometimes you want to drink them for pleasure. When I'm at a dinner with friends, I'm not there to analyse whether the wine comes from this region, whether it's well made or what grapes it's made from. I'm seeking to enjoy myself, and gain pleasure from the experience. On the other hand, if I'm tasting, although I get pleasure from doing so, it's the same _type_ of pleasure as I get learning about anything. The wine may taste foul, being completely unready for drinking, that doesn't matter, I'm seeking to learn about something.

There have been occasions when I've been at tastings anmd I've not spat. Not many, and usually only at the producer. For example, I couldn't bring myself to spit when visiting DRC. However, these are very rare. Last fall, for example, we visited the West coast of the USA as I'm sure you know. We tasted in many wineries - often visiting 4 a day. We HAD to spit if we were going to be able to talk as intelligently to the winemaker of the fourth place we were visiting about the LAST wine they poured, as we had about the first wine poured by the first winery. Further more, if we wanted to be able to keep driving from one winery to the other, we simply couldn't afford to drink.

So - and here I'm with Mike Scapitti, drinking and tasting are completely different, and wine is meant to be drunk. BUT, and here I disagree both with him and with a number of posters in this thread, I think you HAVE to be prepared to taste (and that implies spitting competently) if you are going to be able to maximise your enjoyment of wine later.

Hmm, half true on both counts IMO. A very young wine, still in barrel can show very badly indeed, amd most of us would perhaps reject it wrongly. Equally, spitting isn't _supposed_ to let you "fully appreciate it", so you shouldn't really reject spitting for that reason.

Hang on!!! All these tasting points are never meant to be anything better than one man's/team's ephemeral impression at the time. It's the punters who read them that try to cast them into concrete.

Can I be odd man out, too? While I drink wine with dinner no less than

3-4 times per week (and often more), I also do attend group tastings and visit wineries. On such occasions, I almost always "sip and spit." I do not feel as if this in any way handicaps my ability to evaluate the wine; in fact, it improves it. However, I usually have more than one sip of a wine and often will come back to a wine after minutes or hours to see how a wine has changed. Usually, my notes will reflect that dynamic aspect of the wine. Proper technique (IMO) permits one to taste the wine fully even without swallowing. Moreover, as others have mentioned, it reduces palate saturation and the dulling effects of alcohol. Additionally, when I'm driving it's the only sane course of action. Although I too believe that wine is best appreciated with food, I find that it is easier to analyze a wine without the interactions that food brings to bear. Fortunately, I rarely feel the need to be that analytical at dinner, so you won't find a spit bucket at our dinner table either! ;-)

Mark Lipton

Mark, one of the aspects of tasting that we all consider is how long the taste is on the palate. Can you experience that without swallowing? That to me is on the back of the palate and only comes with swallowing.

and "Bill Loftin" responded...

I have a foot in both camps - sip and spit, sure, when the occasion warrants.

But, when spitting, I try to retain a small quantity in my mouth, which I swallow.

This way, I get to "drink" the wine, without having any effect from the alcohol.

Yes, I know that the olfactory system is the key to evaluation, but I like to swallow a few drops to enhance the experience.

Yes. Not necessarily with food, but yes.

How precise did you normally think magazine ratings were?

Dana

Wine is intended to be drunk with food, not sampled and spit out. The ONLY way to evaluate a wine (if you feel compelled to do this) is by serving it and consuming it with a meal.

Bill, I think that you're talking about judging the finish of a wine. To me, that is all about retronasal olfaction, so simply swishing the wine in your mouth and fully aerating it give me a good sense of the finish. I can't say that I've felt any better informed about the finish when I'm not spitting vs. when I am.

On a vaguely related note, I think that one of the major flaws in many people's sipping technique is taking too large a sip to judge a wine. I find that a comparatively small amount of wine in the mouth, thoroughly agitated and aerated, provides me with the best sense of what the wine is like. And, as I mentioned before, I usually take more than one sip of a given wine to judge it. Pros like M. Pronay are usually much quicker, as they've had so much more practice in both sipping and spitting (I feel like such a newbie when spitting during barrel tastings -- the pros send out the wine in a high velocity stream, whereas I'm mainly trying not to dribble it on my shirt front! :P)

Mark Lipton

While I can understand the "swill and spit" method to evaluate wines, the thought of a fine bottle of Bordeau ending up in the "spit bucket" brings tears to my eyes. I would make sure I had a designated driver, and swallow every drop!

JMHO, Dick R.

I think that at small offerings of 4-5 wines with dinner, I prefer to drink the wine. I just returned from a week in Napa where we sampled well over 150 wines in six days, many from barrel, spitting was a necessity.