How to Taste Wine: Look, Swirl, Smell, Sip, Linger

Pour a small measure of wine into a clear, stemmed glass and hold it over something white: a napkin, a tablecloth, a sheet of plain paper. That is all the equipment tasting requires. What it asks of you is a little order, so that each sense gets its turn.

Professionals follow a set sequence. The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) teaches its Systematic Approach to Tasting, and the Court of Master Sommeliers teaches a deductive tasting grid. Both move from appearance to aroma to palate before anyone draws a conclusion. At home, the same idea fits into five unhurried steps.

1. Look at the wine's clarity and color.
2. Swirl it to release its aromas.
3. Smell, lightly at first, then with attention.
4. Sip, noticing structure as well as flavor.
5. Linger over the finish, then write a few words down.

Look and swirl

Tilt the glass away from you over the white background and study the wine from its center out to the rim. Start with clarity. Most wines should look clear, and the WSET method treats haziness as a possible sign of a fault.

Then consider color. WSET's scale runs from lemon-green through lemon, gold and amber for whites, and from purple through ruby, garnet and tawny for reds. Age leaves its mark here. As a red matures, its color fades and drifts toward orange and brown, a change that shows first at the rim. Whites deepen instead, toward gold and, given enough years, golden brown.

Now swirl, in small circles, with the base of the glass on the table if that feels steadier. Swirling spreads the wine across the bowl and keeps renewing its surface, which lets more of its aroma compounds evaporate into the air inside the glass. A bowl that narrows toward the rim holds them there for your nose. Fill the glass no higher than its widest point, which gives the wine the most surface and leaves room above it for the aromas to collect.

The streaks that slide down the glass afterward, called legs or tears, are driven mainly by evaporating alcohol, with sugar playing a part. They are not a sign of quality.

Smell: fruit, earth, spice and oak

Take a short, gentle sniff, then another after swirling. Begin by asking whether the wine smells clean, the first check in WSET's method. Then ask how strong the aromas are and what they remind you of.

WSET sorts what you find into three families, and the idea is simpler than it sounds.

Primary aromas come from the grape and its fermentation: fruit of every kind, flowers, herbs, and some spice, such as black pepper.

Secondary aromas come from winemaking after fermentation. Oak brings vanilla, clove, nutmeg, toast or smoke. Time on the spent yeast, called the lees, brings bread and biscuit, and malolactic conversion brings butter and cream.

Tertiary aromas come with age: leather, tobacco, forest floor and wet leaves in older reds; honey, hay or mushroom in older whites; toffee and nutty notes in wines aged with deliberate exposure to air.

That sorting clears up a few words that tend to confuse. Spice can be primary, like pepper from the grape, or secondary, like clove from the barrel. Earthy notes such as forest floor, damp soil and mushroom can belong to a wine from the start, and they tend to grow with time in the bottle.

Sip and linger

Take a modest sip and let it move across your whole mouth. Much of what you experience as flavor is actually smell, rising to your nose from the back of the mouth. Wine Spectator's Dr. Vinny suggests a simple test: sip while pinching your nose shut, then let go.

Then turn to structure, which WSET's method takes one element at a time.

Sweetness is sugar, not fruit. Most table wines are dry, with little or no sugar left after fermentation, yet very ripe fruit flavors can still seem sweet.

Acidity is the tingle and juiciness that makes your mouth water.

Tannin is the drying, mouth-coating grip along the sides of your mouth, the feel of over-steeped black tea. It comes mainly from grape skins and seeds, which steep with red wine as it ferments, so reds carry far more of it than whites. Oak barrels can add some as well.

Body is weight. Think of the difference between skim milk, whole milk and cream. Alcohol is a major contributor, so higher-alcohol wines tend to feel fuller.

Alcohol registers as warmth, and in a high-alcohol wine it can feel like a burn.

Finally, linger. Once the wine is gone, how long does its flavor stay, and what is left behind: fruit, spice, the dry pull of tannin? WSET and the Court of Master Sommeliers both rate this finish, or length, on a scale from short to long. You don't need to swallow to judge it. The aromas still reach your nose from the back of the mouth, which is why professionals tasting many wines simply spit, and why you can too.

Putting it into words

Describing wine gets easier with a shared vocabulary. The Wine Aroma Wheel, which sensory chemist Ann C. Noble created at the University of California, Davis, and first published in 1984, arranges aroma terms from broad families at its center, like fruity or floral, out to specific ones at the edge. Start in the middle and work outward: fruity, then citrus, then grapefruit.

For structure, a plain low, medium or high is enough. The professional scales are the same idea with a few steps in between.

Keep your notes short and consistent. Begin with the basics from the label, such as the wine's name, grape and vintage (Velvet Bliss, dry Sangiovese, 2023, for instance), along with the producer and the date you opened it. Give a line each to look, nose, palate and finish, then one honest line on whether you liked it and why. Read back over a season of notes and patterns appear: the grapes you return to, and the styles you pass by.

The Court of Master Sommeliers builds its own advice around consistency: use the same method every time, and repeat it until the steps become second nature. Before long you stop thinking about them. You simply notice more.