To Spit or not to Spit

This post attempts to explore the impact that swallowing has on the enjoyment of wine.

At large wine judging events, a professional taster may have to taste 150 wines in a day. They have to spit. But, they are professionally trained and highly practiced in understanding wine and can get a good sense of what a wine is without swallowing.

I on the other hand, am a newbie wine enthusiast. I recently attended a two day wine appreciation course from the UC Davis Extension program. In the first 1.5 days, we learned about how wine is made and how to taste it. We tasted cheap white and red wines that had been doctored with things like vinegar, sugar, cream of tarter, essential oils, vanilla, green olives and black pepper. We were taught to always spit out the wine when tasting, and thus far, we were happy to spit. On the last afternoon of the course we finally got to taste 12 quality wines in a blind tasting, again spitting and not swallowing the wine.

I hate to admit this, but I actually did not enjoy tasting those 12 wines. We tasted them blind, and several of them tasted sour, bitter or overly alcoholic to me. I could tell they were better quality than what we’d had before, and I could smell and appreciate the more complex flavors from these wines. But, I didn’t truly enjoy tasting them. After the instructor revealed the wines from their brown paper bags, I was shocked. They were of very high quality, a few of which I had very much enjoyed drinking them on previous occasions such as an Oregon Pinot Noir from Domaine Drouhin.

What was wrong with me?

Well, two things were likely contributing to my lack of enjoyment of these normally delicious wines:

1) My taste buds were worn out. We had spent the morning learning how to detect faults in wine such as oxidation and corked wine. In other words, we tasted a bunch of bad wine.

2) Being taught to analyze the wine took some of the pure pleasure out of it. When you don’t know anything about music, you enjoy the music. When you start studying classical music, you hear the components before you hear the symphony. Perhaps some of this was at work. I was simply thinking too much.

However, in addition to the above reasons, I can’t help but think that not swallowing decreased my enjoyment of the wines that day. I mean, when we enjoy wine it is all about drinking wine with family and friends, often with food. The effects of even a small amount of alcohol may also play a part in enjoyment of the wine.

I decided to do an experiment to discover if swallowing impacts our enjoyment of the wine.

I developed the following experiment that proved to myself that swallowing the wine is indeed necessary for enjoyment - at least for non-professional wine appreciators like myself.

I blind tasted myself and my boyfriend Joe with 4 red wines. An inexpensive California Merlot, an inexpensive French Blend, a moderately priced Pinot Noir and a fairly heavy Cabernet Sauvignon that had been sitting on the counter for a few days. The instructions were simple: taste each wine in order (1 to 4). You are not to swallow. You should look at the wine, swirl in in the glass, smell it, put some in your mouth, swish it around and spit. Rate the wines 1 to 10, according to your enjoyment of tasting them. There are no right or wrong answers. You are not being judged in any way -- this is strictly to be a ranking of your enjoyment. Joe got a little annoyed that I made him spit -- he said after the first taste “This is just strange”. He and I both rated the wines very low. I rated them all 1 or 2. Then, we repeated the exercise, but this time we were allowed to swallow the wine after the sip. Scores were now in the 4 to 6 range.

I realize that two persons does not make a scientific test. I plan to repeat this exercise with other friends, and I would encourage anyone who is curious to try it for themselves. I don’t think you even need to taste a certain number of wines, or to taste them blind. I think you can simply try this for yourself next time you sit down to drink a nice wine. Try tasting and spitting that first sip. Then, take your second sip and swallow. Decide for yourself.