At a winery on the Silverado Trail in Napa Valley, I once stood at a tasting room counter beside a woman in her mid-twenties who had come out from the Midwest on a solo vacation. She was exactly the young wine drinker every winery in the valley says it wants and can't seem to reach, and she was doing nothing wrong. The man on her other side, somewhere in his mid-fifties, spent the tasting making sure she knew who the expert at the counter was, and I watched her get a little smaller with each pour. The tasting room host saw all of it and kept pouring, as if the only job behind the counter was getting through the flight.
I've thought about her a lot since. Nothing she did at that counter needed correcting, and very little of what was said to her had anything to do with the wine. A few words from the host, a question about what she liked or what the wine reminded her of, would have changed her whole afternoon, and they never came.
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Most of the beginner guides I've read lately get the steps right and the point wrong. They teach the look, the swirl, the sniff and the sip as a routine to be performed correctly, then hand over an aroma wheel with a hundred words on it, or a set of tasting notes that are technically correct and mean very little to anyone who has never smelled a crushed blackcurrant leaf or a wet slate roof. Damp earth shows up in plenty of them too, and the last time I tasted damp earth I was a toddler eating dirt. The impression left behind is that a good taster is someone who can pull six of those words out of one glass. A beginner reads that and decides tasting is a test with a right answer, and that they are the one most likely to get it wrong.
The steps matter, and I use every one of them each time I taste. Each exists for a plain physical reason. But nobody at a tasting is keeping score, and the notes printed on the tasting card are the winemaker's description of the wine, written for a reader they've never met. What the wine tastes like to the person holding the glass, and whatever it calls up for them, is the only tasting note that person actually needs.
What each step is for
1. Look
Tilt the glass over something white, a napkin or the tasting card itself. Color tells a little. Young white wines run pale, older whites and those aged in oak go toward gold, and red wines lose their purple and turn brick at the rim as they age. The drips running down the inside of the glass, the legs, say more about alcohol and sugar than about quality, so there's no need to admire them for long. Past that, the only thing the color needs to answer is whether the wine looks inviting to the person holding it.
2. Swirl
Keep the base of the glass on the table and draw a few small circles. Swirling pulls air into the wine and lifts its aromas up into the bowl where a nose can find them. A few slow turns do the job as well as a vigorous one. We once had a friend who held every glass high and spun it hard enough to start an outboard motor, and we eventually named that swirl after him. Out of kindness his name stays out of this, but that swirl did more to put me off wine tasting than anything else ever has, because the whole show was there to make everyone else at the table feel they didn't belong. In public, keep the swirl small and close to the table. It's done for the wine, and the rest of the room has no need to watch it.
3. Smell
Most of what we think of as flavor is really smell, which is why a head cold makes everything taste flat. Bring the glass to the nose and take a couple of short sniffs rather than one long one. The tasting card may say cassis and cedar, and it may be right, but the more useful question is what the smell brings back, whether that's somebody's kitchen or a summer somewhere.
4. Sip
Keep each sip small, just enough to coat the mouth, and let it move around before swallowing or spitting. A few things are worth noticing: whether it tastes sweet or dry, whether the mouth starts to water (that's acidity), whether the gums feel dried out the way they do after strong black tea (that's tannin), whether there's a warmth at the back of the throat (that's alcohol), and how long the taste hangs around afterward. Those are the same things the tasting card is describing, and noticing them firsthand is how the words on the card start to make sense.
5. Remember
This is the step the guides leave off. Name whatever the wine called up, even when it's nowhere on the tasting card, and write down a line about it or snap a photo of the label with a few words. A patch of wild raspberries from childhood is as real a tasting note as anything printed on the card, and it's the one that will still be there in ten years.
My own tasting notes are full of things no aroma wheel would print. A good dry rosé puts me back in the Rangeley Lakes country of western Maine as a kid, picking wild raspberries. The first time I tasted Scott Harvey's Vineyard 1869 Zinfandel at his winery in Amador County, it sent me straight back to a dorm room at the University of Maine in the eighties, drinking white Zinfandel and believing that was all Zinfandel had to offer. I'd have liked someone to tell that kid there was a great deal more to it. Neither note would earn points in a classroom, and both have stayed with me longer than any list of descriptors I've ever written down.
The memories do turn out to be useful at the wine shop, because most of them map onto a handful of plain words the trade already uses. Those Rangeley raspberries are what a tasting note calls red fruit, so asking for a dry rosé with bright red fruit gets me close to the bottle I'm after. Blackberries and plums fall under dark fruit. And the damp earth I last tasted as a toddler shows up on a shelf talker as earthy, a word that turns up often around Pinot Noir and plenty of older reds. Nobody needs the whole aroma wheel to shop well. A memory and one of those words is enough to get a good recommendation from anyone behind the counter.
In late October we drove up to Montoliva Vineyard & Winery in Chicago Park, in the Sierra foothills near Grass Valley, and the tasting room host there poured each wine small on purpose. The reason was the one I'd have given myself. By the fourth or fifth wine in a flight, alcohol and tannin have worn the palate down, and a generous early pour leaves the later wines tasting flat or harsh simply because of where they fell in the lineup. The host also made it plain that we could go back to anything we liked once the flight was done, as often as we wanted, and we took full advantage. We left with a full case. A week later I can still say what each of those wines tasted like and what it reminded me of, and that is the whole reason we'll be going back.
When a pour does come out heavy, there's no rule that says it has to be finished. Asking for a smaller taste is fine, and so is tipping most of a glass into the bucket, and no good host takes it personally. It beats the alternative, which is getting home, opening a bottle bought on a tired palate and finding it tastes nothing like the wine remembered from the counter. I can think of no faster way to end up quitting a wine club, or to never set foot in that tasting room again.
The vocabulary comes on its own with time, mostly from tasting next to people who are willing to say what they notice out loud. The confident person at the next spot along the counter isn't a benchmark. Spitting is normal and expected, which is why the bucket is there. At trade tastings, winemakers, buyers and wine writers can work through fifty or a hundred wines in a day, and they spit nearly every one of them, because a clear head is the only way to judge the last wine as fairly as the first. Anyone tasting more than a few wines or driving afterward should use the bucket without a second thought. And not liking a wine is allowed. A good tasting room host would much rather hear an honest "this one isn't for me" than watch a guest force down a pour to be polite, because it tells the host what to open next.
Small things that help
Taste from lighter wines to heavier ones, whites before reds and dry before sweet, so a big red doesn't flatten the delicate wine that follows it.
Mind the temperature. Whites served straight from a very cold refrigerator hide their aromas, so give them a few minutes out first, and most reds show better slightly cool than at a warm room temperature.
Ask for a smaller pour when a big one arrives, and use the bucket freely. Nobody needs to finish every glass.
Drink water between wines and eat something along the way. Plain bread or crackers reset the palate without getting in the wine's way.
Ask the tasting room host which wine they love and why. The answer usually comes with a story, and the story is often the best thing poured all afternoon.
Try it at home
Each of these is a pair of bottles from any supermarket wine aisle, tasted side by side in two glasses with small pours. Tasting two at once makes differences obvious that a single glass hides, and a friend or two at the table makes it better.
Unoaked and oaked Chardonnay. Look for "unoaked" on one label, or a Chablis, and a California Chardonnay that mentions oak or barrels on the other. The first tends toward green apple and lemon, the second toward vanilla, toast and a rounder, heavier feel. Notice the weight of each one in the mouth, then decide which one reminds you of something.
Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio. Both are light whites, but the Sauvignon Blanc jumps out of the glass with grass, citrus and sometimes passion fruit, while the Pinot Grigio stays quiet and closer to pear. This pair shows how much of the experience happens before the first sip.
Dry and off-dry Riesling. Many Riesling back labels carry a small sweetness scale, so pick one from each end. Notice how the acidity keeps the sweeter one from tasting syrupy, and whether either reminds you of a fruit you grew up with.
Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon. Hold them side by side over something white first and compare the color. Then taste for the difference between the red fruit and occasional earthiness of the Pinot and the dark fruit and drying grip of the Cabernet. This is the easiest way to learn what tannin feels like.
One red, two temperatures. Pour the same red into two glasses and put one in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes. The warmer glass usually tastes hotter and heavier, and the cooler one fresher. Most people are surprised at how much a few degrees changes a wine they thought they knew.
I don't know whether that young woman from the Midwest walked into another tasting room on that trip, or since. I hope she found one where the host poured her a small first taste and asked what it reminded her of.
Sources: The five steps follow the basic order of the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting (appearance, nose, palate), simplified here for beginners. The Montoliva Vineyard & Winery visit took place October 24, 2026; the tasting room host asked not to be named.
About the author
Patrick R. Dunn writes Pour Story Society and runs Vianarra, a hospitality storytelling practice based in Sparks, Nevada. He trained in narrative at the University of Maine under Stephen King and folklorist Edward "Sandy" Ives, spent more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger, and spent thirty years leading global crisis management and operational resilience teams across four continents. He holds WSET Level 3 and is the author of Stop Leading on Empty (Archway/Simon & Schuster). Subscribe to Pour Story Society for wine stories from around the world every other Friday.