To define the word tasting means defining something almost intangible. Tasting is to approach wine to our senses to express a complete judgement about its quality, that is to say, about the sentation of pleasure or rejection that we feel before it ( most of the times it?s of pleasure, very few times of rejection). It?s logical to think, therefore that long ago before knowing the origins of the word tasting, they used to taste already, although it was done in an intuitive way.

The origins of the terms tasting or sampling of wines that in reality we could consider synonyms, although they are not exactly the same and it?s since not long ago that you can find them in dictionnaries. The first reference to them appears in 1793, and until 1813 the word tasting is not found as a part of the verb to taste. The first definition are vague and restictive, being necessary to arrive to recent times to find a proper definition about the words tasting and sampling that allow us to understand their meaning properly.

The definition given by Ribereau-Gayon and Peynaud, parents of the modern Oenology, says that tasting is to taste a product, according to your senses, and to try to know this product looking for its faults and qualities, and to express them. For that, one must study, annalyze, describe, judge and classify.