How to Taste Wine

Where it started

The Wine & Spirit Education Trust was founded in London in 1969 and teaches its method at four levels, from one-day Level 1 Awards to the Level 4 Diploma.⁴ Its Level 2 Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine in use in 2026 is Issue 2 of 2023, and the more detailed Level 3 grid is Issue 2 of 2022.¹² The split between "aroma," the primary smells of a young wine, and "bouquet," the smells that replace them as it ages, is wine-trade vocabulary that the spirits world never fully adopted.⁵

Where and how it's made

Appearance. Clarity is clear or hazy, intensity pale, medium or deep. White wine colours run lemon-green, lemon, gold, amber, brown; rosé pink, pink-orange, orange; red purple, ruby, garnet, tawny, brown.¹ Most wines are clear; haziness can sometimes mean a fault or a winemaking choice.³

Nose. Check condition first, clean or unclean. WSET's Level 2 course names three faults to recognize: cork taint, closure failure and heat damage.³ Cork taint comes from TCA, a musty, wet-cardboard compound.⁷ Then describe aromas by source: primary (grape and alcoholic fermentation), secondary (post-fermentation winemaking) and tertiary (maturation).¹

Palate. Sweetness runs dry, off-dry, medium, sweet; acidity, tannin and alcohol low, medium, high; body light, medium, full.¹ Acidity makes your mouth water, and how long that lasts is a good guide to how much there is.³ WSET treats wine below 11 percent as low alcohol, 11 to 13.9 percent as medium, and 14 percent and above as high.³ Body is a combination of alcohol, tannin in reds, and sugar in sweet wines.³

Finish. Time how long the flavours linger and develop after you spit or swallow, not how long the acid, sugar or tannin does.³

Conclusion. Quality runs faulty, poor, acceptable, good, very good, outstanding.¹ It is judged on balance, length, intensity and complexity, not on price or on whether you like the wine.³

How to taste it

Use a clear glass with a bowl that narrows toward the rim, poured well short of halfway, and tilt it over something white to read colour. Swirl, then nose. Take a small sip and draw air through it, so aromas reach the back of the palate and are smelled again retronasally.³ Pairings follow structure: high-acid whites with oysters, tannic reds with salty, fatty steak.⁹ food-pairing-and-serving →

Styles and what the label means

• Alcohol on a U.S. label — wines at 14 percent or less get a 1.5 percent tolerance either way; above 14 percent, 1 percent.⁸
• "Table wine" — at 14 percent or under, the alcohol figure may be left off if "table" or "light" wine appears instead.⁸
• Dry — fermented until the sugar is gone; between two dry wines, the one with more acidity tastes drier.⁶
• Level 3 detail — adds medium(-) and medium(+) steps, a development line, and a "mousse" line for sparkling wine.²
• More label terms. reading-the-label →