Whether you are a wine-maker (vitner), veteran taster, wine enthusiasts, with personalized tasting notes, or a newbie, novice, wanna-be, a first-time visitor to a wine festival or venturing down perfecting your own wine appreciation, tasting tactics and techniques, the nose, aroma and sense of smell develops over time and comes with practice. When you have paid a fair sum for the wine you have just bought, it deserves more than just a quick swallow. There is also a lot to judging the quality of the wine than just tasting it.

To start with, look the wine over. Look at it's colour and send it back if it is cloudy or full of particles. The color of the wine should give you a clue as to it's age. Where red wine is concerned, more often than not, the younger wine will be a deeper, darker color. A more mature red wine will look more pale and perhaps more of a fiery red.

The color of the wine should also give you a clue as to the type of grape that was used to create it. For example, Pinot Noir (the primary grape used in the Burgundy region of France) will produce a pale red colour, whereas as many other red grapes produce a much darker deep purple/black colour.

Has your wine got legs?

Have you noticed that when the ?people who know? taste a wine, they swill it around their glass first and inspect the glass before tasting it. Odd as this may seem, traditionally this technique of inspecting the oily droplets of wine that run down the inside of the glass following the swirling has been known as the ?legs?. The oilier the residue on the glass means the better quality of the wine. Also, oily residue equates to a higher alcohol content within the bottle.

Open your nostrils and inhale those vapours!

As per the professional wine tasters, swill the wine around the glass before taking a sip. This process will increase the surface area of wine that comes into contact with the glass. Make sure you don't ruin the whole scene by spilling the wine, so only fill your glass less than half full for this process. Those grape aromas will soon be flowing! As you take that first good sniff, consider the aromas that you are presented with. Are they fruity? Which fruits can you smell do you think? Your subjective opinion will be one that is fun to compare with your friends!

Now you can Taste

Did you know that the key to tasting wine is actually through your nose! This may sound strange, but as you taste the wine don't forget to smell it at the same time. This is important because the aromas that are received by the receptors in your nose are key to helping you actually ?taste? the wine.

So remember inspect it, sniff it, swill it and slurp it. It really isn't as hard as you think!