We’re quite informal about wine tasting at wine(refined).  We want to enjoy it, savour it, indulge in it, and share it. But we don’t want to over-analyse it, or intellectualise it too much.  There are plenty of palates out there that are much more educated than ours (that’s why we’ll indicate Critics’ Scores in our Wine Deals).

Our reviews are concise descriptions of what we’re smelling, tasing, thinking and feeling when we’re drinking a wine.  We might have a few bottles lined up on a tasting bench, but it’s just as likely that we’re sharing a bottle with family and friends on a Sunday afternoon.

You’ll notice the descriptors broken up into what we’re tasting, and what we’re feeling.  This is a fair representation of how we approach wine: as something to be experienced from a sensory point-of-view, but also as something to evoke emotional responses.

You’ll also notice that we’ll nominate tasting as being “blind” or “not blind”.  This quite simply refers to whether we know what the wine is as we’re tasting it “not blind”, or whether we’re tasting it with no idea what’s in the glass “blind”.  Our brains are complex beasts, and there’s no doubt that prior knowledge of a wine’s identity will have a significant impact on how you experience the taste and smell of the wine.  We feel like blind tasting is one of the best ways to truly challenge and train your palate, and we’ll try to do it whenever possible (even if it occasionally makes us look slightly stupid).