What color is a wine? How intense is the aroma? Is the wine’s acid lively? Would you say the alcohol in a wine is weak, balanced or hot? These questions may intimidate beginning as well as experienced wine tasters. They need not turn curious wine enthusiasts away though. With the help of a computer and The Wine Profilers website, you will be guided through a tasting and will evaluate a wine as you taste. For example as you evaluate a wine’s color and hue, an image on the computer screen shows the color/hue. You can try to match what you see in the glass as close to what you see on the computer.

There are a series of evaluation responses for you to make. On your computer, a differential allows you to place a mark where you you think it should go based on your evaluation. For example, you can mark a wine’s aromatic intensity as inexpressive, discrete, expressive or very expressive. You can also place your mark between these descriptors. You can add gustatory comments, useful if you want to know what you thought of a wine at a later date. You can rate the wine between one to five stars and indicate how long the wine should age before you drink it.

Perhaps the most valuable tool of this Internet site is your score based on your analysis and the analysis of a professional panel. You will see where you placed your mark and where the marks were placed by a professional panel. If there is a large difference between your score and that of the professional panel, that would indicate an area for you to practice. Wine homework, where you have to taste wines, is the best homework one can ever have assigned.

The Wine Profilers is the creation of husband/wife team Michel Buillard and Melba Allen from France. They both have extensive backgrounds in wine and want to share their knowledge with the public. Their website offers gentle wine education as well as a basis for evaluating wine. Melba presented a wine tasting seminar at Messina Hof Winery in Bryan, Texas on Sunday July 28th. Several people attended the presentation and, along with their computers as an aid, evaluated three Messina Hof wines. The participants liked the session, one that opened their eyes towards wine evaluation.

Don’t think wine evaluation is only for professional writers. Anyone can do it. Evaluating a wine does take practice. If you enjoy computers and Internet sites, The Wine Profilers website may be the perfect tool for you to learn to evaluate wine.

Cheers.
Terry