Wine tasting is more than just pouring wine into a wine glass, sipping, and swallowing. It is an art that involves engaging more than your taste buds. Here’s what you need to know if you’re looking to get into wine tasting.

Wine tasting is examining wine by tasting, smelling, and looking. The goal is to sensually and visually analyze the wine’s aroma, appearance, texture, and flavor to determine its quality and more. It reveals other things about wine, like age, sugar and alcohol content, where it is in its development cycle, and where it’s made. However, it takes practice and a conscious effort of remembering different wines to master such things.

For instance, you need to know how wine made under particular conditions or using grapes from, say Canada tastes. This knowledge and level of perceptiveness come with experience, which you will get from tasting different wines and making a mental note of their subtle differences.

Before you sip on wine, take a moment to observe it. Consider its appearance. The depth of color reveals things like its approximate age. New white wine will tend to be lighter in color than aged white wine, which is brownish. Red wine, on the other hand, loses its dark red color the older it gets.

You can also tell the sugar and alcohol content of wine by observing how it behaves where it meets the glass on the sides. Consistently thicker (highly viscous) wine tends to have higher alcohol and sugar content. Light (low viscous) wine is dry and less sweet.

Smelling can reveal not just the wine’s aroma but also where the aroma is coming from. Ingredients, such as fruits, herbs, and floral notes, are responsible for the primary aroma. Secondary aroma is associated with winemaking practices, while tertiary aroma is acquired through aging.

As you smell the wine, take note of peculiar aromas. Off-aromas, like moldy basement, rustic brick, vinegar, or fish market, are signs of spoilt wine. Pros call it corked wine.

Your tasting environment can affect your sense of smell and perceptiveness. So it helps to smell the wine in a neutral environment. Step away from strong perfumes for the wine’s aroma to stand out.

If you’ve smelled one too many, sniffing your forearm should “reset” your senses. Also, remember to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth to enhance your sense of smell. Also, pour the wine into a wine glass to about one-third full and swirl to reveal more aromas.

It takes practice to pick up on the subtle properties of wine through tasting. This is because it’s a time-based process – with a beginning, middle, and end.

The beginning refers to the initial impression when the wine first hits your taste buds. It captures such things as taste (sweet or sour, whether natural or artificial).

The middle is how the wine feels in your mouth. Some wines will be smooth; others will have a dry taste. Riper wine gives a richer texture, as does that with high alcohol content. A dry taste can indicate higher acidity or tannin [think tea] levels.

The end (finish) refers to the taste that remains in your mouth after you’ve swallowed the wine. Quality wine tends to leave a rich flavor that lingers in your mouth. The depth of the lingering flavor can also give you a hint about the wine’s complexity and age, with the complex and quality wines having more, rich layers of flavor.

Wine tasting is an art that requires practice to master. With several things, like aroma, texture, and complexity (and their many shades) to take mental note of, it can be overwhelming. So, it’s advisable to start small and master the obvious ones, like color, viscosity, and off-aroma. As you get better at it, try blind wine tasting.