As we progress in our wine journey, broader understanding tends to break into multiple layers, and this is where it gets both challenging and interesting. To illustrate, lets talk about the difference between ‘Appreciating a Wine’ and ‘Judging a Wine’. Many wine schools teach about the structured manner to appreciate a wine which primarily implies identifying the character of its structural elements like Tannins, Acidity, Sugar, Alcohol etc. So, one can say a particular wine has a medium acidity, high alcohol abv and so on.
On the other hand, Judging a wine adds more layers to this activity by building upon the basic model of wine appreciation. Here , the focus shifts to interplay of wine’s structural elements, meaning how they interact with each other to give a balanced wine or alternatively a dis-arrayed one. GuildSomm suggests (BLICA T+X) as suggested formula to follow in a Blind Tasting (all wine students understand wine formulas..). I made this slide on it which looks self explanatory. More on it in later posts.