Each day, Ben introduced customers to a new element of wine tasting. We covered Body, Acidity, Tannin, Sweetness, Alcohol and Balance, along with recommendations of what wines to drink to get a sense of each element.

You can discover the full series below, or click here to watch the playlist on Youtube.

Day one: Understanding how to taste BODY in your wine

Day two: Understanding how to taste ACIDITY in your wine

Day three: Understanding how to taste TANNIN in your wine

Day four: Understanding how to taste SWEETNESS in your wine

Day five: Understanding how to taste ALCOHOL in your wine

Day six: Understanding how to taste BALANCE in your wine

Earlier in the week, Ben gave you insights on how to taste body, acidity and tanin in wines. Today he continues the series with a video on mastering sweetness!

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The basics of tasting sweetness in wine

Sweetness is an essential element to any wine. Let's not forget that wine comes from grapes and the fundamental thing that all grape farmers (aka viticulturists) want to get right is the balance between acidity and sugar come harvest day.

The reason for this is that sugar is the key ingredient to fermentation and therefore alcohol.

While sugar gets converted into alcohol, winemakers don't ferment down to 0g of sugar. There is usually always some residual sugar left in the wine. Even "bone dry" wines can have 1 or 2g per litre of sugar left in them. 

This is because all winemakers want a balanced wine and sugar is one of the key elements to attaining that balance.

To get an idea of how this is achieved, take a glass of water and squeeze a lemon into it. The liquid will taste tart and, depending on your sensitivity to acidity, sharp. 

Now take some granulated sugar and stir it into the lemon water. A little bit will soften the acidity; more and it will start to taste like homemade lemonade. Notice how it also brings out the fruit and makes the lemon feel richer, more vibrant.

This is what sugar can do - but you always need acidity there to balance it out. You wouldn't drink syrup after all.

Got a question we can answer in tasting week? Email Ben at ben@novelwines.co.uk

Where to start your wine tasting

Now you've gained an idea of tasting sweetness, let's move onto the wines. Start with a dry wine. We recommend something like the Sanzon Tokaj Blanc, which has low residual sugar but a nice, soft dollop of Harslevelu in it to round it out a little. Notice how fresh and zingy the wine is.

Then move onto something medium dry, like our Sula Chenin Blanc, coming from the warm Maharashtra climate in India. Luckily Chenin retains its acidity, so it can take on more sugar without becoming cloying. This wine is sweet and appley, perfect for pairing with dal or coconut curries.

Finally, go really sweet and check out our dessert wines. A top pick would be the Demetervin Szamorodni, a sweet wine from Tokaj in Hungary. See how sugar can add depth, complexity and richness to a wine. Furthermore, notice that it does so while retaining acidity and freshness - that's because they've chosen to make it using a naturally acidity grape like Furmint, so you get lots of delicious flavour without it tasting like syrup.

Let us know how you get on!

Earlier in the week, Ben gave you insights on how to taste body and acidity in wines. Today he continues the series with a video on mastering tannin!

Don't forget to like, share and subscribe on our Youtube channel!

The basics of tasting tannin in wine

Tannin is often why wine is described as 'dry', because it can offer a drying sensation on the palate. This dryness has over time become more associated with residual sugar in wine and varying levels of sweetness, but we'll talk more about that tomorrow.

If you want to know what tannin feels like, then start with familiar items. Making yourself a black tea and sipping it will have similar sensations to a particularly tannic red wine.

Should you want to feel raw, proper tannin on your palate, you might want to try putting a wet tea bag on your tongue. These sensations are generally felt throughout the mouth but particularly on the roof of your palate. This kind of tannin can add depth.

Skin tannin, however, which is more of a fruit-like astringency, can be best identified on the tip of your tongue. These tannins are coming, literally, from grape skins, and so the best way to get an idea of how they taste is to peel a grape and just eat its skin. This kind of tannin can make you pucker, but in wine it often adds freshness and structure.

If a wine is "over extracted", it means it's been left on the skins for too long and you'll have a lot of quite unpleasant astringency.

Now you've got an idea of how tannin feels, let's talk wine!

Got a question we can answer in tasting week? Email Ben at ben@novelwines.co.uk

Where to start your wine tasting

Tannin is mostly found in red wines because these wines have been left on their skins to extract colour and phenolics. Some white wines will show tannin, usually from oak; orange wines, which have extended skin contact but are white grapes, also have tannin.

However, to keep things simple, begin with a cool climate light bodied red wine. We've picked a Regent from Aldwick Estate in Somerset, but you could go for a Pinot Noir or a Gamay (Beaujolais) instead. These red grapes have thinner skins and therefore offer less extraction. They should feel soft, fruity and smooth.

Then try a bigger, more tannic wine. You could go for a young Tannat like Fausto, if you want an idea of big tannins, or something a bit more common like Cabernet Franc, which has an obvious green and twiggy tannin. Our Sabar Estate Cabernet Franc will give you a good idea of tannin in wine.

Let us know how you get on!

Yesterday we talked about how you taste 'body' in wine and we continue with the basics around acidity in this latest video. 

Don't forget to like, share and subscribe on our Youtube channel!

The basics of tasting acidity in wine

When you're starting out with acidity, look for something that might be more familiar to you. Ben recommends tasting Greek yoghurt, naturally low in acidity and complemented by a creamy, fatty note, and a range of citrus fruits, ranging from the relatively low acid and sweet orange and the bittersweet grapefruit, through to a mouth-watering lemon and the piercing acidity of a lime.

Taste them in toe and see how your palate responds to each level of acidity. What makes your mouth water most? When is it too much? Where on your palate are you feeling the effects of acidity? What would you need in a wine to balance out the different levels?

Once you've got a good idea, you can start to pick out what wines you might like best. Ben gives some examples of where to start below.

Got a question we can answer in tasting week? Email Ben at ben@novelwines.co.uk

Where to start your wine tasting

High acidity wines like Riesling give you a good idea of the lime-like acidity, described as "high" in the WSET systematic approach to tasting.

Lime level acidity wines like our Bibo Runge Rheingau Riesling from the Pfalz in Germany are softened by a hint of residual sugar, oak maturation and maturity in the bottle. The key is always balance!

Medium to high acidity wines that could be either lemon-like or grapefruit-like, depending whether they are zingier or bittersweet, can include wines like the Holzer 'Wagram' Gruner Veltliner. This peachy, zingy style of Gruner from the young Arnold Holzer in Austria has a herbaceous, zesty and peppery finish with lots of grapefruit-like acidity.

Finally, softer acidity wines you may describe as orange-like or even, if a little flabby, a Greek yoghurt, are generally from hot climates. Here's where sugar ripeness has outpaced acidity and given you a rounder, bigger wine. Colomba Bianca Organic Kore Grillo from Sicily is a good example of this.

Wherever you start, tasting acidity in wine comes with practice so try to taste as varied as you can until you're confident about what style you enjoy the best.

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A good cheat to learn different 'weights' of wine is to take something familiar, such as milk, and try it in skimmed, semi-skimmed and full fat forms. Feel how it coats your mouth and how the depth of the liquid effects the flavour.

Got a question we can answer in tasting week? Email Ben at ben@novelwines.co.uk

Tasting takes practice and, over time, you'll be able to pick out the body of a wine with relative ease. As you learn where your taste lies, you can start to ask for the kind of weight of wine you like when you shop for your next bottle.

If you're looking for good examples of the different styles of wine, start with the extremes:

Light body wines include varieties like Bacchus or Sauvignon Blanc in white wine and Pinot Noir in red wines. The lighter of these tend to be from cooler climates where there's less sugars in the ripened grape and where cooler weather retains acidity well.

Full body wines include oak-aged white wines, particularly Chardonnay and Furmint, or big and tropical whites like Grillo, and oily white wines like Gewurztraminer. These wines are fuller bodied the warmer the climate they are grown in. Full bodied reds are numerous, but the fullest include varieties like Tannat, Shiraz or rarer grapes like Alicante Bouschet.

Give the video below a watch and subscribe to our Youtube channel for more wine, cider and spirits videos...

This is a dry Pinot Noir rosé, produced by Woodchester Valley from organically grown grapes in the Cotswolds. The vines are rooted in limestone soils, unique to the area.

The result is a wine with punchy berry, grapefruit and tangy rhubarb aromas.

So what goes with Afternoon Tea?

Let's talk about savoury scones and the salt factor, thinking oily fish like salmon or cured meats like Serrano ham, stuffed inside a scone. These things love acidity, so a fabulously zippy wine like Aldwick Estate's Jubilate Quintessentially English, which is made from two grapes called Seyval Blanc and Madeleine Angevine. It is bursting with crisp lemon fruit, and makes a delightful match with savoury scones.

If you want something extra special, try the Furleigh Estate Prestige Cuvee, which is a zero-dose Champagne-style fizz, making it extra dry, so you get all this lovely green apple skin fruit and zest that cut right through the food and make everything taste better.

Fizz with sweet scones

On the sweet side, look for young Pinot Noir fizz, so Rose or Blanc de Noirs style. So if you've got jam and cream in your scones, whichever way you apply it, opt for warm climate where sugar levels are higher. We have two deliciously fruity, aromatic Pinot Noir rose from Familia Geisse, a family-owned winery in Brazil; the great value Amadeu Brut Rose that's full of juicy strawberries and the Terroir Brut Rose with its creamy autolysis, summer fruits and brioche notes that would sing with jam scones.

Also, Slovenia is a great place to buy Champagne-quality fizz for less. Istenic Gourmet Rose is one we sell and it's full of summer berries and recently won a People's choice award.

We're excited to introduce our brand-new video feature, Wacky Wine Pairings. Each week we ask our customers and fans to suggest a person, concept or thing to pair a wine to. If you choose our favourite wacky idea, we'll send you a bottle of wine and make a video explaining the pairing!

Our first ever #wackywinepairing was on space travel, suggested by Kat Agg. We picked the deliciously-good Jim Barry Assyrtiko from Clare Valley, which is a new frontier in wine-making. 

Watch the video below!

Blogger over at Stuffed, Natalie is a foodie of the best kind: no snobbery, just great flavour. Locally-renowned for her love of burgers, Natalie shares some of Bristol's best food destinations.

Along the way we also introduce her to the best pairings with Chinese food and sausage rolls, as well as indulging in a glass of delicious English fizz. What more could you ask for?

What wines did we taste?

Cottonworth Classic Cuvée, England

Multi-award winning English fizz from Hugh Lidell in Hampshire. This bubbly is one for the connoisseurs. Green apple mousse with zippy grapefruit citrus and a buttery finish. Buy wine.

Kabola Organic Vrhunsko Malvasija, Croatia

An organic white wine from a family vineyard in Istria, Croatia. This herby and rounded white wine is a great food partner. Full of mouth-watering tropical fruit and herbaceous undertones. Buy wine.

Kardos Dry Furmint, Hungary

A classic dry white single varietal wine from the volcanic terroir of Tokaj. Made by Gabor Kardos, this is a fab introduction to Hungarian wine. Beautifully balanced! Buy wine.

Dunleavy Vineyards Pinot Noir Rosé, England

One of Bristol's best wine-makers, Ingrid Bates specialises specifically in rosé. It's dry but bursting with strawberries and cream. The balance and acidity make it a lovely match with sweet and sour Chinese cuisine. Buy wine.

Monsoon Valley Podkum Shiraz, Thailand

This wonderfully fruity number from Prachuaap Khiri Khan in Thailand is full of plummy ripe fruit. It's a great choice with sausage rolls thanks to the hint of sweetness in the wine but if you want a classier pairing drink it with Thai pan-fried duck and a soy sauce. Buy wine.

Learn more

Jonathan Ray hosts BBC Radio Bristol's Sunday Breakfast Show and the broadcaster's seasonal Bank Holiday shows. Ray also used to host The Late Show on BBC Radio Wiltshire.

Here he is talking to Ben about the perfect Summer wines:

All content copyright BBC.

By using milk rather than wine as an example, we can associate something more familiar to the textures. This means when we come to try the wine we have an easier method of telling whether it's light, medium or full in character.

We hope you enjoy the second episode of our wine web series. Let us know what you liked, what we can do better and any other ideas you have!

Cheers :)

Subscribe to Novel Wines with Yaz and Ben on our blog or on Youtube.

To celebrate such an awesome subscription box, Cheese Posties founder Dave Rotheroe and our very own Ben Franks thought it would be an awesome idea to pair some wines with Dave's toasties.

Here's the result...

The wines we tried were the a'Beckett's Lynchets white wine from Wiltshire with the Nutty Goat toastie. Tasted so perfect! Notes of zippy lemon fruit and orchard apple just cut through the toastie's salty, goaty flavours and made the whole thing mellow gorgeously.

Del Pedregal Tannat was the next choice with Cheese Posties' big and bold Smokehouse toastie. The meaty, rich fruit flavours of our Tannat were just perfect for this toastie's delicious BBQ sauce.

Finally, we tried the Red Velvet toastie with our sweet, crushed apple Monsoon Valley Late Harvest Chenin Blanc dessert wine. That one was just pure indulgence!

You can subscribe and find out more about Cheese Posties here.

Here's our first episode exploring acidity in wine and how best to look for it.

An easy way to test for acidity is to buy yourself some citrus fruit: an orange, pink grapefruit, lemon and lime. These go up in acidity, from the balanced and sweet orange, the bittersweet grapefruit to the zesty lemon and searing acidity of the lime.

All wine has acidity and generally speaking it will mainly fall into the grapefruit-lemon category. Oranges tend to indicate a fairly low acidity wine, which is OK in some youthful styles but is unlikely to sustain maturation in the cellar. Lime-level acidity needs to be balanced - think of the searing acidity of a good Riesling that's balanced by sweetness (without it, you might struggle to enjoy it!). 

The key with all wines is to be in balance. Acidity, body, alcohol and sweetness are all essential ingredients but you don't want any one of them to stand out too much.

Subscribe to Novel Wines with Yaz and Ben on our blog or on Youtube.

In the video, Ben and Laura discuss what was behind the origin of Novel Wines before chatting about the best wine and food pairings. 

We tried three different pairings with cheese from Nibbles - Bath's oldest and best cheesemonger. 

The first is a Tomme de Chevre 20 month+ aged goat's cheese paired with Gabor Kardos' Supreme dry Tokaj. The Chardonnay-like blend has flavours of apple and cream from the oak, which goes so well with the full bodied goat's cheese flavour. Laura says it brought out so much more in the cheese!

The second is the Chateau Ksara Cabernet Sauvignon rich red wine, paired with the pongy Farmer's Gould cheddar. Cheddars, especially mature ones, work really well with tannic big reds. 

Finally we tasted the awesome Thai Monsoon Valley Late Harvest Chenin Blanc with a blue. You can't beat that pairing, so you just have to give it a go at home!

Painted Wolf Wines, by winemaker Jeremy Borg, help support the conservation of African wild dogs by donating part of its UK revenue to the Tusk Foundation.

Ben reflects on the story of how Novel Wines was founded in 2016 before moving onto the wine tasting where we tasted the Pinotage Rosé, Penny Swartland Viognier and Guillermo Pinotage red. 

It's always great fun sharing our wines with the guys on The Crunch and a pleasure to share the unique styles from Painted Wolf Wines.

You can view the full range from Painted Wolf here.

According to scientists, swirling your wine around in the glass uses the physics of wave technology to enhance the flavour compounds in the glass. This means we can better smell and taste the wine.

It does this in two ways. Firstly it invites oxygen into the wine, which opens up the flavours due to chemical reactions. However, it's also specific to the shape of a glass of wine, as where the wave reaches the glass wall and the free liquid in the middle cascade over one another and essentially "mix" the wine around.

It's in fact this mixing process - kept gentle as it is done by the human hand - that allows a wine to "open up" through its chemical reactions with oxygen. The result is a wine you can better smell and, as a result, better taste.

This video was presented by broadcast journalist Yasmin Cooke and award-winning wine writer Ben Franks.

Yasmine and Ben discuss how a wine like this, which has more acidity, makes a fantastic partner with fish and other food.

Each week we'll be discovering a new wine from our range. The aim is to help you get to know the wines we sell and how to describe wine when speaking to friends. As the concept is still new, we would love your feedback so please do comment below!

Enjoy the video! or catch up on the web series in full ►

The reason we selected this wine as our first to taste in the series is it's a great one to test out what you learnt from the Palate Test (catch up here), looking at the ways acid, body and sweetness help to balance and structure a well-made white wine.

As this is "Trocken" meaning "dry", it's a good one to begin with before moving into the sweeter realms of Halbtrocken (medium dry), Spatlese (sweet) and Auslese (very sweet) Rieslings.

The Anton Finkenauer is grown in the Kreuznach estate in the region of Nahe, famous for it's dry white wines.

Enjoy the video!

In the final Palate Test it's all about how we describe a wine as "dry". To help us understand this observation all you need is some granulated sugar, lemon juice, water and honey. We look at how a dry wine (wine without sugar) can make your mouth feel "dry" due to acidity without balance. When we combine the sugar with the lemon juice, a whole new experience is revealed with everything neatly in balance!

Remember: we may all like different wines but an objectively good wine is always a balanced one. It has to be balanced to our tastes and what we enjoy for us to discover that new favourite tipple we keep coming back to.

Without furtherado, enjoy!

Watch our other episodes here: Novel Wines on YouTube

You can follow the video at home and join in. All you need is some skimmed, semi-skimmed and full fat milk. These are used to recreate the experience we have with wine but using something that is a little more familiar to tell apart.

Without furtherado, enjoy the video below and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to get all the latest content from Novel Wines.

Watch our other episodes here: Novel Wines on YouTube

The Palate Test is all about learning what to look for in a good bottle of wine. Acidity, body and sweetness are the building blocks of a balanced white wine. By associating these things with fruit, milk and sugar we can get a better understanding of wine when we're new to it.

You can do the Palate Test at home and follow the video. All you need for Acidity training is an orange, grapefruit, lemon and a lime. Watch below for what to do next:

In our first run of episodes in late August, Ben will introduce you to the "palate test" wine tasting technique, an easy and approachable way to think more about an "objectively" good wine. After we've covered the basics, we'll taste our deliciously peachy Anton Finkenauer Single Vineyard Riesling QbA Trocken from Germany.

The web series features wine novice and broadcast journalist Yasmin Cooke and award-winning wine writer and Novel Wines co-founder Ben Franks. Each week Ben will introduce Yaz to a new wine from our range.

You can enjoy our teaser trailer below:

The web series features wine novice and broadcast journalist Yasmin Cooke and award-winning wine writer and Novel Wines co-founder Ben Franks. Each week Ben will introduce Yaz to a new wine from our range.

We will also be inviting guests to join us in discovering a selection of new and exciting wines. The first episodes will introduce audiences to the "Palate test", a great way of getting familiar with the structure and balance of a wine.

Our first wine to be tasted is the Anton Finkenauer QbA Trocken Riesling from Nahe, Germany. It's always good to begin with a Riesling as they come in all manners of style from the bone dry to ultra sweet, while often showing exceptional balance of body, acid and sweetness.

Later on in the web series will be a Halloween and Christmas wine tasting special and some food & wine matching episodes.

Most of all we want your feedback! What are we doing that you love? Is there something more you want in our videos? Make sure you let us know and we might even send you some free wine!

Broadcaster and Bristol-based journalist Yasmine Cooke will be presenting the show alongside award-winning wine writer and Novel Wines co-founder Ben Franks. The series begins filming this Saturday with the support of our sponsor The Bath Brew House.

Each episode Yaz and Ben will explore a new wine from the range. Later in the series we will also be inviting guests to join us and get involved in the conversation around our quality wines. Guests already lined up include Minuteman Press director Dave Dixon and Bristol Post's Business Woman of the Year Angela MacAusland.

With filming beginning this weekend, the series is looking at a release date of mid-August.

In this video we share Furleigh Estate Rosé Brut, the Japanese Grace Koshu Kayagatake and the Lebanese blend Chateau Ksara Blanc de Blancs.

We loved appearing on The Crunch to share some of our exciting wines. Unfortunately it was so quick we didn't get to try any reds (sad face), however the sparkler and two whites we did taste went down really well with their team.

So there you have it, our TV debut! It was this that introduced us to broadcast journalist Yasmin Cooke and inspired our own web series, which you can watch now here: Novel Wines with Yaz & Ben.