When wine tasters evaluate various wines, though the process looks enjoyable, they are truly working. First, all wines are not wonderful - this is why they need to be tasted and evaluated. The professional wine taster tries many bad wines to find a few good ones. Second, even when the wines are good, the process of evaluating them is complex, tedious work. In order to keep the palate fresh (and the taster sober) the wine must always be spit out. With each sip the taster must bring to bear all previous experience and knowledge about a given wine, carefully searching a mental database of impressions, nuance and detail. The process, in fact, can be exhausting. The coffee taster has much the same job, and, in fact, it is more complex since a wine taster need not roast his samples.


Back to Cup

Copyright 1995 La Torcaza Estate. All Rights Reserved.
Credits and People.