How to Taste Wine: Look, Swirl, Smell, Taste, Conclude

To taste wine, you look at it, swirl it, smell it, taste it and then decide what you think, in that order. The steps slow you down long enough to notice what’s actually in the glass: fruit, acidity, tannin, sweetness and how long the flavor lasts. You don’t need special training or an expensive bottle, just a clean glass, good light and a few wines to compare.

The method below follows the structure the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) teaches in its Systematic Approach to Tasting, which splits tasting into appearance (how the wine looks), nose (how it smells) and palate (how it tastes), followed by conclusions. We’ve added practical tips from Wine Folly and from winery guides.

Before you start

WSET’s course guidance asks students not to wear perfume or bring strong-smelling food, and to have clean glasses, water and spittoons ready before a tasting begins. At home, that translates to:

• Neutral light and a white background, such as a napkin or sheet of paper, for judging color.
• The same glass for every wine, so you compare the wines and not the glasses.
• Small pours. We’d fill the glass a third of the way at most, so there’s room to swirl.
• Water and a spit cup on the table.
• No strong smells nearby: no candles, perfume or cooking.

Step 1: Look

Tilt the glass over the white background and check three things:

• Clarity. WSET notes that most wines are clear, and that haziness can point to a fault or a winemaking choice.
• Color. WSET’s scale for whites runs from lemon-green through lemon, gold and amber to brown; for reds, from purple through ruby and garnet to tawny and brown. Wine Folly explains that white wines tend to deepen in color as they age, while reds lose color.
• Intensity. How deep the color is, from pale to deep.

Wine Folly suggests spending only a few seconds here.

Step 2: Swirl

Swirling releases more aroma compounds into the air in the glass, according to Wine Folly. Visit Napa Valley suggests keeping the base of the glass on the table and moving it in small circles if you’re worried about spilling. A few seconds is enough.

Step 3: Smell

Put your nose into the glass and take a sniff. Wine Folly recommends alternating short and long sniffs and, if your nose gets tired, smelling your own forearm to reset it.

Start broad, then narrow down. Rather than hunting for “blackberry” straight away, ask whether the fruit is citrus, orchard (apple, pear) or tropical in a white, or red, black or blue fruit in a red. Then get specific.

WSET and Wine Folly both sort aromas into three groups:

Type	Where it comes from	Examples (Wine Folly)
Primary	The grape	Fruit, flowers, herbs
Secondary	Winemaking, such as fermentation	Bread, yogurt, cheese rind
Tertiary	Aging in oak or bottle	Vanilla, baking spice, nuts, leather, dried fruit

Smell is also where faults show up first. WSET lists cork taint, closure failure and heat damage among the problems tasters learn to spot. Visit Napa Valley describes corked wine as smelling of damp, wet or rotten cardboard.

Tip: An aroma kit with small vials of common wine scents helps train your nose. Our guide to the best wine tasting kit compares options.

Step 4: Taste

Take a sip big enough to coat your mouth, then smaller sips to pick out details, as Wine Folly suggests. WSET teaches students to draw a little air through the wine in the mouth and to bring the aromas to the back of the palate, because, as its course guidance puts it, flavors are detected by the nose, not the tongue. The tongue itself picks up only sweetness, acidity, bitterness, salt and umami.

Work through the structure:

Element	What to notice	Useful reference points
Sweetness	Is there any sugar?	Wine Folly: most people only perceive sweetness above about 4 g/L, and dry wines are generally under about 10 g/L
Acidity	How much your mouth waters	WSET: how long the watering lasts is a good guide to acidity
Tannin (reds)	A drying, grippy feel on gums and tongue	WSET compares it to strong black tea; Wine Folly lists Pinot Noir as low and Cabernet as high
Alcohol	Warmth in the throat	WSET: low is under 11% ABV, medium 11–13.9%, high 14% and above
Body	Weight in the mouth	WSET: a mix of alcohol, tannin and sugar; Wine Folly compares light to full body with skim and whole milk
Flavors	Do they match the nose?	Compare with what you smelled
Finish	How long the flavors last after you spit or swallow	WSET: short, medium or long

Step 5: Conclude

Now put it together. WSET judges quality on four points:

• Balance: alcohol, acidity, sugar and tannin working in harmony, as Visit Napa Valley’s glossary defines it.
• Length: how long the flavors linger and develop after you spit.
• Intensity: how pronounced the aromas and flavors are.
• Complexity: how many different aromas and flavors you can find.

WSET is careful to separate this from personal taste: a quality assessment is not about how much you like a wine. Wine Folly’s version adds the personal question too. Did you like it, and what made it memorable? Sum the wine up in a few words. In our view, that one-line summary is the most useful habit you can build, because it’s what you’ll remember next time you shop.

Tasting vocabulary

Term	What it means
Acidity	The tart, mouth-watering quality; low acidity can taste flat or “flabby”
Balanced	All the parts work in harmony
Body	How heavy the wine feels: light, medium or full
Corked	Spoiled by cork taint; smells of damp cardboard
Dry	No noticeable sweetness
Finish (length)	How long the flavors last after the wine is gone
Mouthfeel	Texture: silky, smooth, rough or chewy
Nose	The wine’s aromas
Tannin	Drying compounds from grape skins, seeds and oak
Primary, secondary, tertiary	Aromas from the grape, the winemaking and aging

Most of these definitions follow Visit Napa Valley’s tasting glossary and WSET’s course guidance.

To spit or not to spit

Spitting is normal, not rude. WSET’s course guidance explains to students why a spittoon is needed when tasting, and its finish assessment assumes you spit. Visit Napa Valley’s advice is to spit into the dump bucket if you don’t want to get intoxicated, and Wine Spectator’s tasting-room guide says to pour any leftover wine from your glass into the bucket on the counter.

We’d spit whenever you’re tasting more than a couple of wines. Spitting cuts how much you drink but doesn’t make driving safe, so on a winery day, book a driver.

Tasting at home vs at a winery

At home you control everything: the same glasses, the right temperature, a slow pace and side-by-side comparisons, which Wine Folly calls the fastest way to learn. Keep notes and, once you’re comfortable, try tasting blind with the labels covered.

At a winery the staff pour and explain, and you get to taste wines you might never buy unseen. Some practical points:

• Book ahead. Visit Napa Valley says popular wineries can fill their reservations weeks in advance, and some small wineries need to know you’re coming.
• Expect a fee. Visit Napa Valley puts the average basic tasting in Napa at about $40, from around $20 to $200 or more for tours or food. Some wineries waive the fee if you buy wine.
• Pace yourself. Visit Napa Valley recommends two or three wineries a day, since most visits take at least 90 minutes, and suggests hiring a driver or tour company.
• Share and make space. Wine Spectator’s guide says it’s generally fine for a couple to share a taste, and suggests stepping away from a busy counter once you’ve been poured.
• Skip the perfume. It masks the wine’s aroma for you and everyone nearby.

If you’re planning a trip, our Paso Robles wine tasting guide covers one of California’s friendliest wine regions.

A simple tasting flight to try at home

A flight is a set of wines poured side by side. Three or four is plenty for a first try. Each pair below isolates one thing, so the differences are easy to notice:

Flight	Wines	What we’d look for
1. Acidity	A crisp Sauvignon Blanc vs an oaked Chardonnay	High vs softer acidity, and what oak adds to aroma and body
2. Tannin	A Pinot Noir vs a Cabernet Sauvignon	Low vs high tannin (Wine Folly’s examples)
3. Sweetness	A dry Riesling vs an off-dry Riesling	How sugar changes the taste of the same grape

We’d pour light to full and dry to sweet: whites before reds, the sweeter wine last. Cover the labels if you can, write a one-line note for each wine, then reveal them and compare. We’d keep each pour small, have water and bread on the table, and spit freely. For more on reading what other tasters say, see how wine ratings work.

Wine tasting is for adults of legal drinking age (21 in the US). Please taste responsibly and never drive after drinking.