The first cellar of every tour produces the same small panic. We are standing in a karas cellar in Rind, in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor, between 1,400 and 1,600 metres, under one bulb. Someone has drawn a little Areni Noir from a buried clay vessel into a jug, the glasses go round, and a guest looks at me with the face of a person who has just been handed an exam paper.
Most guides to tasting wine like a sommelier assume a classroom. In a cellar the answer is to do less than you think, in a different order. I spent years in restaurant kitchens before wine and more than a decade in wine since; most of what I know about tasting I learned in rooms like that one, cold, dim, with the winemaker two metres away.
Why a cellar is not a classroom#
A tasting course happens at 20 °C, in daylight, with finished wines in a planned order. A working cellar gives you none of that. It sits between 10 and 14 °C underground, which mutes every aroma and sharpens every tannin. The wine may come from a tank, a cask or a clay vessel; it may be hazy, fizzy with its own carbon dioxide, and a year away from a bottle.
And the person who made it is standing there. In a classroom you taste to identify and to score. In a cellar you taste to understand decisions: when the grapes were picked, what vessel they went into, how long they stayed on their skins, how much sulfur went in at bottling. The wine is the evidence, the winemaker is the witness, and your job is to ask good questions of both. So the method is short: look briefly, smell twice, taste for structure before flavour, then talk.
Look, and then distrust what you see#
Tilt the glass over something pale, your hand if need be, and look at the rim. Colour tells you about age, grape and vessel, and much less about quality than most people assume. Nebbiolo is the lesson: a young Barolo can be pale garnet, nearly translucent, and still carry more tannin than a black-purple wine from somewhere warmer. I use the Vajra cellar in Vergne, above Barolo, to make the point; the large Slavonian casks there hold Nebbiolo that looks delicate in the glass and is anything but on the palate.
Areni Noir is thin-skinned and comes out mid-ruby even from a karas, so do not expect it to look like Saperavi. Amber or copper in a white means skin contact; haze means no filtration. Both are information, not faults.
Ignore the tears running down the inside of the glass. They come from alcohol evaporating and pulling wine up the side, they hint at alcohol and a little at sugar, and they say nothing about quality. Nobody in a cellar has ever been impressed by a guest studying them.
Smell twice, name one thing#
Swirl once, gently; a small circle is enough. Then two sniffs. The first is short, half a second, to catch the most volatile aromas before your nose adapts. The second is longer and lower in the glass. After it, say one word to yourself, not twelve: fresh fruit, dried fruit, flowers, herbs, earth, wood. That single word starts a conversation with the winemaker.
At cellar temperature a wine gives up far less aroma than it will at the table, so cup the bowl in your hand for a minute and smell again. The difference between the first and second smell of a cold karas Areni, once your palm has warmed it, is the most reliable small lesson I have.
Learn four faults and stop there. Vinegar or nail varnish is volatile acidity. Wet cardboard is cork taint, the bottle’s fault and not the winemaker’s. Struck match or rubber is reduction, which often blows off with air. Mousiness does not show on the nose at all: it arrives a few seconds after you swallow or spit, like stale crackers at the back of the throat. Say so quietly if you meet one; the winemaker would rather know.
Taste for structure before flavour#
Take a proper mouthful, not a sip, hold it for three or four seconds, then swallow or spit and breathe out through your nose. That exhale is where most of the flavour arrives, through the back of the nose.
Then ask your mouth four questions. Is it sweet, even faintly? Do you salivate after you swallow? That is acidity. Does it dry your gums and cheeks? That is tannin. Is there warmth at the back of the throat? That is alcohol. Those four, plus how long the taste lasts, are the structure, and structure is what a winemaker can actually control. Fruit descriptors are opinion; tannin and acid are close to fact.
Structure is also where amber wines catch people out. A Kakhetian Rkatsiteli or Kisi that has spent months on its skins in a qvevri has real tannin, and judged as a white it tastes harsh and odd. Judged as a light red, with grip, it makes sense. At Pheasant’s Tears in Sighnaghi the Kisi spends six months on its skins, and it is the wine I use to reset a guest’s idea of what a white can be.
Cold exaggerates tannin and acidity and hides fruit and sweetness. The Radikon estate in Oslavia serves its skin-fermented whites at table at 14 to 16 °C rather than chilled, and the rule holds in any cellar. If a wine seems hard, warm the glass before you decide.
The order, the pipette and the bucket#
In a cellar the winemaker sets the order, and it is nearly always right: lighter before heavier, dry before sweet, often young tank samples before finished bottles. A tank or cask sample is unfinished. It may fizz and smell yeasty, and its fruit will change. Taste it for what survives, acidity and tannin. Judging a cask sample on its aromatics is like judging bread by the smell of the dough.
The Moravian cellars 30 to 60 minutes from my door in Brno add a tool of their own. The host lowers a koštýř, a long glass pipette, into the cask, closes the top with a thumb and releases the wine into your glass. The pipette sets the pace: one cask, one glass, one question, then the next arch.
Spitting is normal in a working cellar. There will be a bucket, a drain or a corner of the floor, and the host will show you which. Drink water between wines, eat the plain bread if it is offered, and come without perfume, mint or coffee on your breath.
The exception is a table. At a Georgian supra the wine follows a toast, the tamada leads, glasses are raised and touched, and the wine is drunk, not spat. The rules are in how to behave at a winemaker’s; the short version is follow the host.
What to ask the winemaker#
The best question in a cellar is usually not about flavour. Ask when the grapes were picked and why that week. Ask how long the wine stayed on its skins. Ask what the vessel is, how old it is and where it came from; in Rind, the karas at Zorah were bought from village households and buried for temperature stability, and that fact explains the texture better than any adjective of mine. Ask whether the fermentation started on its own, and how much sulfur went in at bottling.
Every answer tells you how to read the glass. Long skin contact means judge it as a red. Native yeast and no filtration mean expect haze and texture. A large old cask means no vanilla, so if you smell vanilla, ask again. I pour both natural and classic wines on my tours, and the questions are the same in both kinds of cellar; only the answers differ.
Food changes everything#
The cellar plate exists for a reason: salt and fat soften tannin, acidity cuts through fat, and a wine that felt hard on its own becomes correct with bread and lard. In South Moravia the plate is škvarky, smoked meat and a heel of bread. In Vayots Dzor it is lavash, fresh cheese and herbs, and the karas Areni that tasted lean at the vessel is suddenly about sour cherry and white pepper.
So taste the wine on its own first, for structure, then again with the food; the second taste is the winemaker’s intention. In Kakheti the amber Rkatsiteli that puzzled you in the marani is built for khachapuri, pkhali and anything with walnuts. In Piedmont the lean Nebbiolo wants tajarin and butter. Every good region had this worked out long before a sommelier arrived to write it down.
On tour#
I run cellar tastings with five to seven wines, one question per wine, and no scoring. The method earns its keep where the vessels cannot be seen into: the karas cellars of Vayots Dzor, the qvevri maranis of Kakheti, the old casks of the Langhe. For practice, the Armenia route and the Kakheti qvevri week are where I do most of my teaching; a day out of Brno is the short course. A notebook is optional. Warm hands and one honest word per glass are not.
