When I give seminars or staff trainings I often tell my audience, only partly tongue in cheek, "The more you drink the more you know". What I mean by this is that it is only by tasting will one develop a good understanding of wine style and quality. Tasting with buyers in the field is at the center of our profession, and a good ability to discuss wine as you taste with buyers will help you to close the sale more often. The first step in improving our ability as tasters is to learn to distinguish between the several different types of tasting.
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The first type of tasting is known in French as "dégustation hédonistique" – a hedonistic tasting. This is kind where you swallow. Anyone who truly loves wine will have a natural affinity for this type of tasting. This is more than drinking too much with friends, however. What this type of tasting implies is an intellectual curiosity allied with a just appreciation of the pleasures of wine.
Enjoying wine with your buyers is frequently an important tool to making the sale. While it is essential to maintain professional standards at all times, tasting in an informal setting with your clients often improves the bond between you, and puts the wine in a different context. Pairing an unexpected wine with food can be one way to do this.
 The next type of tasting I refer to as professional tasting. This is the type of tasting where commercial interests take precedence over an unbiased assessment of quality. This is the tasting, analyzing and comparing of wines with the intention of selling them. It is a way of thinking about the taste of the wines that we represent that helps us fit them into a context that puts them in their best light.
To be a talented professional taster, it is necessary to be able to quickly judge a wine, determine its strengths and weaknesses, calling attention to the former, while minimizing the latter. A light bodied Burgundy can be praised for the exquisite nature of its perfume, and a closed, tannic Barolo can be extolled as having massive body and extract.
 The easiest strategy for professional tasting, of course, is to show buyers wine that they want to buy. Often, however, it is more important for us to sell them what we want them to buy. This can be accomplished by putting a twist or spin on the taste of a wine that might make it attractive. A Chianti from a thin vintage can be praised as being very typical and showing the essence of Tuscan earthiness. In order to present wines to a buyer in this way, it is essential to be conversant in current wine styles and to have the ability to analyze the character of the wine in the glass.
 This brings us to the final type of tasting, which I refer to as analytic tasting. This is an honest evaluation of the wine in the glass, divorced from its context. It means the evaluation of some very distinct and concrete attributes of a given wine on an absolute scale. This type of tasting is often overlooked by salespeople in our industry for the simple reason that occasionally some wines (perhaps those represented by our competition) show as less than perfect examples of their type. I believe, however, that analytic tasting can be one of the best learning tools in the quest for wine knowledge. Once learned, this system is an asset that you carry with you no matter what you do in life.
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Wine Regions of the World
