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Build a tasting note

Seven steps, 138 descriptors and 13 structural dimensions, assembled into a note that is still useful a year later and to somebody who was not there.

There is no score field, and there will not be

A number attached to a drink is a recommendation whatever it is labelled, and CiderHQ does not make recommendations. This produces a record of an observation. The test for whether that is what you have written is whether the note would be equally useful to somebody who is never going to drink it — the guide this is built from sets out why that is the more accurate form as well as the more responsible one.

1. Conditions

First, not last. Two notes on the same cider that disagree are usually two different serving temperatures, and without this there is no way to find that out.

2. Appearance

Observations, not conclusions. A haze can be pectin, starch, protein, yeast, metal or microbial, and those look identical — so record what you see and decide later.

3. Aroma, in the glass

Place it in a family before reaching for a word. Every descriptor needs an intensity — presence alone decides almost nothing, because the same three words describe a fine traditional cider and a ruined one.

Crisp, green, just-cut apple and apple skin.

Overall aroma intensity

How much there is, before what it is. A cider can be unmistakably apple and very faint, and a note that records only the descriptor has lost half of that.

These are what you can smell in the glass. What you perceive while drinking is a separate measurement and goes in the next section — volatiles released in the warm mouth reach the same receptors from the other side, and a cider can smell one way and taste of something the nose never reported.

Six things that get recorded as each other

Each of these is written as a test rather than as a definition, because a definition does not help somebody who cannot tell which they are experiencing.

Aroma and flavour
Aroma is what reaches the nose from the glass. Flavour is what reaches the same receptors from inside the mouth while you drink. Smell without sipping, then sip and breathe out through the nose — if the second gives you something the first did not, that is the difference.
Sweetness and fruitiness
Sweetness is a taste on the tongue; fruitiness is aroma. A bone-dry cider full of ripe-apple esters is routinely called sweet. Hold your nose and sip: what remains is sweetness, and it is usually far less than expected.
Bitterness and astringency
Bitterness is a taste, at the back, and it peaks and fades. Astringency is a texture — a drying and roughening as tannins bind salivary proteins — and it builds across sips. The test: ask whether it is happening on the tongue, or to it.
Acidity and sourness
Acidity is the property; sourness is the sensation it produces. Sweetness suppresses the sensation without touching the property, so a sweet cider can carry high acid and not taste sour. If it makes the sides of your tongue water, the acid is there whatever it tastes of.
Tannin and bitterness
The same phenolics produce both and chain length decides which dominates: shorter oligomers read as bitter, longer polymers as astringent. A cider can be markedly drying and barely bitter, and both get called "tannic".
Body and carbonation
Gas gives an impression of fullness a still cider has to supply from glycerol, residual sugar and phenolic texture. Let a sample go flat in the glass and taste it again — what is left is the body.

4. Flavour, while drinking

Take a small sip, hold it briefly, and breathe out gently through the nose. That samples the retronasal route deliberately rather than incidentally, and it is where most of what people call taste actually happens. Record what you find here even where it repeats the aroma — a descriptor present in both is a different observation from one present in only one.

5. Palate

Scored against each dimension’s own words rather than against a general scale. Leave anything you did not attend to blank — an unrecorded reading is more honest than a guessed one.

  • Sweetness How sweet the drink tastes, which is not the same as how much sugar it contains.

  • Acidity The sharp, mouth-watering quality that makes a cider taste fresh rather than flat.

  • Bitterness A taste sensed at the back of the tongue, distinct from the drying grip of astringency.

  • Tannin The phenolic material that gives cider structure, grip and ageing capacity.

  • Astringency The drying, rough sensation left after swallowing.

  • Body How much weight and viscosity the drink has in the mouth.

  • Carbonation How much dissolved carbon dioxide the drink carries, from perfectly still to fully sparkling.

  • Alcohol The warming, slightly sweet presence of ethanol.

  • Freshness Whether the drink smells and tastes of live fruit or of time and air.

  • Fruit character How strongly the drink smells of apple or pear, and of fruit generally.

  • Phenolic character Smoky, spicy, leathery or medicinal aromas that sit apart from fruit.

  • Fermentation character Aromas made by the ferment rather than carried in from the fruit.

  • Oxidative character Nutty, bruised-apple, sherry-like or cardboard notes from exposure to air.

6. Finish

Keep attending for ten or fifteen seconds after swallowing. Astringency builds here, bitterness peaks here, and mousiness appears here and nowhere else.

Kept separate from everything above on purpose. An observation stays true; a hypothesis may be wrong, and a note that fuses the two cannot be revisited.

If something is wrong and you cannot place it, the fault finder takes the signs you can observe and ranks the faults that explain them.

7. Anything else observed

There is no score field and no verdict field, and that is deliberate. A note that records a preference cannot be compared with another taster’s or re-read against new information later.

The note

Fill in anything above and the note assembles here.

What this note is still missing
  • No serving temperature. It is the single variable that moves a tasting most, and two notes that disagree are usually two different temperatures.
  • No conditions recorded at all, which makes this note impossible to compare with any other.
  • No aroma recorded. Most of what is called taste is smell, so this is the largest gap a note can have.
  • No structural readings. Two ciders with identical descriptor lists and different structures are different drinks.
  • Nothing recorded for the finish. Astringency builds there and mousiness appears there and nowhere else, so an empty finish line is where a fault hides.

Why it is built this way

Conditions first. Two notes on the same cider that disagree are usually two different serving temperatures, and without the conditions there is no way to find that out. Cold suppresses aroma and sweetness perception while leaving acidity almost untouched, so the same cider read from the fridge and at cellar temperature is two different sets of observations.

Every descriptor carries an intensity. Presence decides almost nothing: “farmyard, oxidative, volatile” describes a fine West Country farmhouse cider and a ruined one equally well. Almost every interesting question about cider is a threshold question, so the intensity is the finding and the descriptor is only where to look. Three bands rather than ten, because the discrimination people can actually reproduce between sessions is coarse and a finer scale would record precision the taster did not have.

Suspicion is kept apart from observation. “Sharp, mouth-watering acidity” is data and stays true. “Probably malic, so no malolactic” is a hypothesis and may be wrong. A note that fuses them cannot be revisited — a year later there is no way to recover whether “oxidised” meant a faint sherry note in an otherwise fresh cider or a flat, cardboard-dominated glass, and those are findings about different problems.

The gaps are named rather than hidden. A form that looks complete when it is not is worse than one that says what is missing. An empty finish line is the one that matters most: astringency builds there, bitterness peaks there, and mousiness is essentially undetectable in the aroma and appears only retronasally some seconds after swallowing.

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