How to taste wine

As we progress down the path of wine enjoyment it becomes easier and easier to pick out nuance and build an understanding of our own unique tastes. If you are having trouble with this it may be that you need some help learning or re-learning how to taste wine.
There are two aspects to this proposition. One of which is how to taste wine to enhance your enjoyment of the beverage, but you may also want to know how to approach tasting from a professional standpoint. Both scenarios would involve a similar understanding of the subject.
From a professional standpoint, tasting will begin with a visual process. We observe the color, clarity, and brightness of a wine. To a wine professional these observations begin to tell us a story. Color can indicate age or tannin levels for instance. Twirling the glass will aerate the wine and also create “legs” on the side of the glass. The legs can tell us about alcohol content and even the climate the grapes came from.
One thing that I find helps me to remember and enjoy a wine is to force myself to pick out specific elements out of a given wine. When smelling a wine I try to pick out at least three types of fruit that I smell. Is there any earth: compost, slate, gravel, forest floor, etc.? Is there any evidence of oak? Can I smell any flowers or herbs? These are the questions I always ask myself. I was fortunate to learn what we call deductive analysis from the Court of Master Sommeliers, but you don’t have to be a wine expert to ask yourself these questions.
When it comes to the actual tasting part we want to measure the various qualities of the wine that we taste with our tongue. It is also a good time to re-affirm what we smelled as our olfactory nerve will be more sensitive to the wine we put into our math. The traits that we can taste with our tongue are sweetness levels, acidity levels, tannin levels, and length of finish. We can also taste saltiness, but that is a rare trait in wine.
Many of my clients drink more wine then me and even better more expensive wine then me. I tend to remember wines better than the average fine wine consumer because I force myself to pick these elements out of each wine. It really helps to make the wine stick into your memory and after a while you can recall specific descriptors which to some people seems like magic. Though, after practicing this for a while it becomes natural and no longer requires very much thought.