The four steps of tasting.

The first thing to understand about tasting wine is that nobody is born good at it. The wine writers you read, the sommeliers you meet, the importers who place the allocations — every one of them learned by repetition. Tasting is a discipline. It is also, mercifully, a short one. There are four steps, and once you know them, you have a method you can use for the rest of your life.

The four steps are look, smell, taste, conclude. They take, with practice, about ninety seconds.

1. Look

Pour an ounce or two into a clean, clear glass. Tilt it gently against a white surface — a napkin, a sheet of paper, the edge of a tablecloth — and look at three things.

• Colour. Whites range from water-clear (Pinot Grigio, young Riesling) through straw and gold to deep amber. Reds run from translucent ruby (Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo) to opaque purple-black (Malbec, Syrah). Colour is your first clue to grape and age — young reds are blue-purple at the rim, mature reds turn brick and brown.
• Clarity. Most fine wine is bright and clear. A slight haze in a natural or unfiltered wine is normal; cloudiness in a conventional bottle is a warning.
• Viscosity. Swirl gently and watch the "legs" or "tears" run down the glass. Slower, fatter legs suggest more alcohol or residual sugar. This tells you nothing about quality — only weight.

Spend ten seconds here. Do not over-think it. The bottle will tell you the rest later.

2. Smell

This is where most of tasting actually happens. The human palate registers only five tastes; the nose registers thousands of aromas. Most of what you think you "taste" is what your nose is reading.

Bring the glass to your nose without swirling and take a short, calm sniff. Then swirl gently — this releases volatile aromas — and sniff again, this time a longer breath. Ask yourself, in this order:

1. What family of fruit? Citrus, orchard (apple, pear), stone (peach, apricot), tropical (mango, pineapple), red fruit (cherry, raspberry), black fruit (blackberry, plum)?
2. What else besides fruit? Floral (violet, rose, elderflower), herbal (mint, eucalyptus, bay leaf), earth (forest floor, mushroom, wet stone), spice (clove, black pepper, cinnamon), oak (vanilla, toast, coconut, smoke)?
3. What does the wine smell like overall? Young or aged? Fresh or developed? Simple or layered?

You are not trying to be impressive. You are trying to put a vocabulary on what is already in the glass. The more you do this, the more specific it gets.

3. Taste

Take a normal sip — not a thimble, not a mouthful. Move it across your tongue, and then, if you are alone or among friends, gently draw a little air across it. Now read four things:

• Sweetness. Tip of the tongue. Bone dry, off-dry, medium, sweet?
• Acidity. Sides of the tongue, where your mouth starts to water. Low, medium, or high?
• Tannin (reds only). The drying, grippy sensation on the gums and cheeks. Light, firm, or aggressive?
• Body and alcohol. The overall weight in your mouth. Skim, two-percent, or whole milk?

Then ask the most important question of the entire process: does the finish carry? A great wine continues to evolve after you have swallowed it — five, ten, twenty seconds of flavour and aroma still present. A simple wine ends abruptly. The length of the finish is the single most reliable signal of quality.

4. Conclude

Take ten seconds before you say anything. Then answer three questions, in your own words:

1. What was this wine like — its overall shape, mood, and weight?
2. What did I like, and what did I not?
3. If I tasted this again next year, what would I want to compare it to?

If you are keeping notes, write a sentence. Not a list of fruit. A sentence. "Burgundy-cool nose, very fine tannin, the kind of finish you wait for." That is more useful, six months later, than any score.

How to practise

Open two bottles. Different grapes, different countries. Pour them side by side and run the four steps on each — first one, then the other. You will learn more in one evening of comparison than in a year of single bottles. This is the principle behind every serious tasting we host.

And when you are ready to do it with structure, alongside other collectors and a guide, our monthly tastings and masterclasses are designed for exactly this — six wines, two hours, a working method by the end.