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How to taste before you commit

Why taste before buying a whole bottle

A 750 ml bottle holds about seventeen standard drinks of 40% spirit, or roughly five glasses of wine. That is a lot of commitment to make from a shelf talker and a photograph. Tasting first is not about becoming a judge or learning a vocabulary of obscure fruit; it is about not spending forty dollars on something you will avoid opening.

Three ways to taste without buying the bottle

The cheapest option is a pour at a bar that carries the bottle you are curious about. Order it the way the bar serves it, ask the price first, and treat the drink as a test rather than a treat. A second option is a smaller format: many spirits and some wines come in 375 ml, 200 ml or single-serve sizes, which cost less and finish faster. The third is a tasting with two or three friends, where everyone brings one bottle and you split small pours between you. Four people and three bottles is a generous evening for the price of one bottle each.

Set the taste up properly

  • Use a small, tulip-shaped glass for spirits if you have one, and a plain wine glass for wine. A wide tumbler pushes the alcohol straight at your nose.
  • Serve white wine and lighter reds cool rather than cold, and spirits at room temperature unless the label suggests otherwise.
  • Taste before you eat anything strongly flavoured, and skip perfume, coffee and toothpaste beforehand.
  • Put a jug of water and a plain cracker or a piece of bread on the table. Water between pours resets your palate and keeps you steady.
  • Pour small: 15 to 25 ml of spirit, or an inch of wine, is enough to form a view.
  • Spit if you are tasting more than three things. Tasting and drinking are different activities.

What to notice, and in what order

Start with the nose, before you sip. Swirl the glass gently and smell once from just above the rim. You are looking for the general family of aromas, not a poetic list: fresh fruit, dried fruit, grain, vanilla, smoke, herbs, earth. Then take a small sip and hold it for a moment. Notice the first impression, then what happens in the middle, then the finish, which is simply how long the flavour stays after you swallow or spit. Finally notice heat. High alcohol shows up as a warm prickle at the back of the throat; if that is the only thing you can taste, a few drops of water will often open the glass up.

Order matters

Taste from light to heavy. Dry before sweet, low alcohol before high, wine before spirits, and delicate before smoky. Once your palate has met a peated whisky or a tannic red, everything after it will seem thin. If you are tasting both wine and spirits in one evening, do the wine first and finish with the spirit, and rinse your glass with water in between.

Use your own words

You do not need anyone else’s vocabulary. If a rum reminds you of burnt sugar on toast, write that down. The only useful tasting note is one that helps you decide next time. A short note with four parts is enough: what it smelled like, what it tasted like, how long the finish was, and whether you would buy it again. Keep the notes in your phone; after a year you will have a personal map of what you like, which is worth more than any score out of a hundred.

Deciding with the price on the table

A taste tells you the character; the price tells you whether the character is worth it. Divide the shelf price by the number of standard drinks in the bottle: roughly seventeen in a 750 ml spirit at 40%, about sixteen in a 700 ml bottle, and five or six in a 750 ml wine. A $22 Cotes du Rhone works out near four dollars a glass; a $60 spirit works out near three and a half dollars a pour. That arithmetic is the honest comparison between two bottles, and it is often the moment a fancy label stops being tempting.

When the answer is no

Not every taste ends in a purchase, and that is the point. If the finish is short and hot, if the sweetness is doing all the work, or if you simply would not want a second glass, leave the bottle on the shelf. There is no prize for finishing a bottle you dislike, and a store that respects you will not mind. Come back to the same shelf in a month; the bottle that seemed dull in July can be exactly right in December.