Tasting wine is an art on its own that unless you learn you can never fully appreciate the work of wine makers or the wine itself. You have to sharpen your own senses first by knowing how to recognize the quality of wine by judging through its taste, smell, and look. In general, our senses can recognize four major types of tastes and that include salty, bitter, sweet, or sour. But when these tastes are combined, you need to be able to use both your senses of taste and smell to recognize the distinct flavors. To begin learning the art of wine tasting you need to first check out the wine’s clarity and color. You should have a sparkling clean wine glass for this. Pour in the wine, and by tilting the glass in the direction away from you, check out the color of the wine. Hold up a white napkin in the background or stand next to a white wall when doing this.

When judging the color of your wine try to think further ahead from the usual blush, white, or red colors. If you are testing a variety of red wine then look deeper to analyze whether you see a ruby shade, brick – red shade, brownish shade, purplish shade, or perhaps a maroon shade. In case of white wine you must look for shades of pale yellow, amber, gold, straw – like, brown, or even light – green.

After checking out the color of the poker wine you have to see how the opacity of your wine is. Check how watery, opaque, transparent, cloudy, clear, dull, or brilliant the wine is. Tilt you wine glass a bit to judge its opacity. You can also swirl around your glass and see how the opacity is. Check for any sediments, floaters, or bits of cork in it. The trick of spotting a white wine that is older is that it will have a darker shade than the younger white wines. Same goes with red wine. The older it is the more orange tinges it will have and the younger it is the more reddish its color will be.

Now coming towards the smell of poker wines, you have to swirl your wine glass around for at least ten to twelve seconds to be able to get a correct aroma. By doing this you vaporize the wine’s alcohol and hence it gives way to some of its more natural aromas. Then by instantly taking a whiff you will immediately get an impression of how your wine is. Some people also like to put their nose a little into the rim of the glass and deeply inhale. Keep your senses open for aromas like flowers, berry, vanilla, oak, or citrus. Finally you have to take a taste to tell about the quality of wine. Take a small sip and keep it swirling around in your mouth for awhile. The initial phase will help give you an impression of the type of wine you are drinking.