The main reason for drinking wine is enjoyment, which is enhanced by knowledge. If you're new to wine or just want to brush up on the basics, try our interactive wine tasting. Find out what to look for in a wine, learn about the different types and get some tips on matching wine with food. Cheers!

Wine tasting tips
When we try a wine we use three senses: sight, smell and taste. How we describe the results is a language of its own and one you shouldn't be afraid to use.

Colour
Just by looking at a wine you can check its clarity - is it clear and bright? - as well as the colour. Try looking at a wine carefully against a white surface, such as a tablecloth. As they mature, white wines become darker, going from pale yellow-green to yellow to gold. Red wines change from deep purple-red to brick-red and then to reddish-brown.

Glassware
To get the most out of wine tasting, you should use a clear wine glass with a stem. Good wine glasses curve slightly in towards the rim, to ensure that the bouquet is concentrated. Holding the glass by the stem keeps your hand away from the surface of the wine, so it doesn't introduce distracting odours or warm the wine in the glass.

Bouquet
Swirling and smelling wine before you slug it back isn't done for effect. This essential technique is called "nosing" the wine. Swirling the wine around the glass breaks the surface tension and mixes it with air to release the bouquet. Place your nose above (but not in) the glass and sniff - not too deeply. The sense of smell tires quickly, and a couple of little sniffs should be enough to characterise the wine.

Strange but true
Wine smells of many things because the chemical compounds in wine are found in lots of other substances. You'll soon learn to recognise flowers, fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, berries and other foods (chocolate, honey, licorice). Strangely enough, wine rarely smells of grapes.

Tasting
Now take a good mouthful of wine, drawing in a little air to encourage the volatile elements to vaporise. Move the wine around in your mouth - certain tastes are recognised on different parts of the tongue. As a rule, wine tastes salty and sweet at the tip, bitter at the back and acidic at the sides. A wine shouldn't be sour, but it should have sufficient acid to give it freshness and tang. Wines lacking acid taste insipid. Tannin puckers the insides of the mouth. Fine red wines in particular need tannin to help them age.

Flavour
The key to a wine's identity is its flavour, which we try to describe by comparisons with flavours we know - often fruits, sometimes vegetables and other food. Occasionally we note a faint suggestion of some unusual smell or taste - tobacco, lanolin, petrol, earth and even tar.