Your guide for tasting red wine

Last updated: September 11, 2025

Red wine is the most preferred brew around the world. According to Statista, 234 million hectoliters of wine were consumed globally in 2020. Wine is the mostly preferred alcohol drink after cocktails are wine and for men, it’s third after beer and cocktail.

You cannot just pour your wine in any of your wine glasses and gulp it down. Wine tasting is an art cultivated over time according to Gloria Maroti Frazee, director of Wine Spectator School. So, we have curated this article for you to walk you through a wine tasting.

Steps to wine tasting

Kris Kane from the Presque Isle Wine Cellars reveals that it may appear daunting to find the wine that suits your palate. But are you drinking it the right way?

1.    Start with the basics

You might start to know a little about wines by looking at their bottles to know from which grape it has been made and where it was made. Soil, climate, humidity, and grapes are factors that influence the taste, aroma and alcohol content of the wine.

• Cold climate wine- wines produced in colder climates are light-bodied. So, any wine manufactured in northern France, Italy, Germany, Chile and Colder parts of the USA will be light-bodied.
• Warmer climate wine- wine produced in warm areas are full bodies. It means they will have a strong scent and flavour. Wines made in Southern France, Argentine and California give a tingle to your taste buds.

Winemakers are experimenting with humidity levels, temperature, and darkness to come up with a new variety. The difference created by Microclimates and soil variations can change the entire profile of the wine.

When you go to a wine tasting, make sure you are dressed for the occasion in any of these wine tasting outfits. 

2.    Goblets and stemware

The name reminds me of Goblet of Fire. But choosing the right glass for drinking wine is no less than a deadly game. While champagnes are taken from flutes, red wines are taken through glasses with a large and rounded base.

For lighter wines, short glasses are used for drinkers to smell them right away. Longer goblets are for strong brews to let their aroma linger before taking them in.

3.    Decanting and swirling

Gently pour the wine into a decanter to let it fuse with oxygen in the air. Let the sediments settle and carefully pour wine from decanter to wine glasses without unsettling the sediments. Try to judge it on these parameters: –

• Is its viscosity slightly higher than usual?
• Does it leave legs and coat the glass walls as you pour it?
• What flavour did you expect based on its texture and what eventually came out?

Now, swirl the goblet in a clockwise direction by clasping it from its stem. Try to make out if there is any residue floating over the top. If your wine is opaque, it means it has come from a warm region and it was not left for long to age. If the wine leaves legs on the gals, it means its alcohol content and sweetness is high.

4.    Taking in the aroma

To drink the wine without taking in the aroma should be declared as a cardinal sin according to some passionate sommeliers. After swirling your wine, take it closer to your olfactory senses and breathe in a strong whiff. It is better if you do it by getting the rim of the glass closer to your nose. What are we looking for?

• First, a fruit-like scent will hit you. All the wines are made from fermented grape juice after all. Try to indulge more to find the different tones. You may be lucky to find the type of fruit from blackberries, black currants to strawberries. Closing the eyes might help in focusing and remembrance. Is the smell sweet, intense, or limey?
• Some of the aromas in wines are infused at the stage of brewing. You may get a hint of the smooth scent of rose or vanilla or a spicy whiff of pepper or mint. Your olfactory senses will take a while before you identify different scents with their respective taste for a correct conjecture.
• The notes in a wine are noting but different tastes that it can offer. You can learn more about them by referring to the Aroma Wheel of wine in Karen MacNeil’s 2001 edition The Wine Bible. After you drink it, it leaves an aroma and taste. It is known as finish or aftertaste. It defines the closing note of the wine. the closing note can reveal about the container in which the wine was left to age such as Oak. You can also find a smoky aroma which means that the inside of the barrel in which it was aged was smoked before the wine was left to age in it.

After all this, the final step is to let it roll in your mouth and let it tingle your taste buds. In some wine tasting ceremonies, you might find people spitting the wine after tasting them. It may seem awkward but it is normal since people do not want to get drunk just over tasting wine.