What is the finish/length of a wine?

The finish is essentially the wine's farewell — and it can tell you a lot about quality. After you swallow (or spit, if you're at a formal tasting), pay attention to what's happening in your mouth. Are flavours still evolving? Can you still taste fruit, spice, minerals? That's the finish doing its thing.

Professional tasters measure it in caudalies — a unit where one caudalie equals one second. Here's a rough guide: less than 4 caudalies means a short finish (perfectly fine for casual sipping); 4-8 is medium (good quality wines); anything above 8 starts getting into serious territory. The greatest Burgundy or Bordeaux wines can hold steady for 15 to 20 seconds — it's genuinely impressive when you experience it.

What creates a long finish? Several things working together: ripe grapes with concentrated flavours, balanced acidity that keeps things fresh, well-integrated tannins, and careful ageing. Oak barrel maturation often adds complexity that stretches out the finish. The grape variety matters too — Riesling, for instance, can produce extraordinarily long mineral finishes even without oak.

Here's a useful exercise: next time you open two wines of different price points, taste them side by side and count the seconds after each sip. You'll likely notice the pricier bottle lingers longer. That difference in persistence is a big part of what separates an everyday wine from something special.

One important nuance: length alone doesn't equal quality. A long finish that's bitter or harsh isn't a good sign. What you want is a finish that's clean, flavourful, and evolving — the kind that makes you want to take another sip.