Step 5: Taste the Wine

It's finally time to drink the wine. Take a good-sized sip - enough to fill your mouth about a third full, and let the wine linger for at least ten seconds. The tongue can detect only very basic flavour elements: sweetness at the tip, acidity at the sides and bitterness at the back. This means that it's important to roll the wine around your mouth with your tongue, exposing it to as much of your mouth as possible. Gently 'chew' the wine as if it were a piece of food, letting it coat your tongue, teeth, cheeks and gums.

The real business of tasting wine, however, goes on in a cavity at the back of the mouth, which is really part of the nose. Serious tasters will open their lips slightly and inhale into their mouths while wine rests on the tongue. This encourages vaporisation, which releases aroma and flavour to rise up into this nasal cavity.