The first step of assessing wine is looking at it.

Wine snobs like to talk about the legs of wine. In all honestly, this is a bit of a waste of time.

The wine legs (or tears of the wine as the French refer to them) can give an indication of the alcoholic content of the wine. But it’s so difficult to be accurate with a reading from legs,

So we say just read the label!

For appearance, we only ever find it useful to note something if the colour is completely out of the ordinary i.e. it’s a really dark rose.

The next step is to smell your wine.

Swirl the wine in the glass. Looks poncy but does release some aromas, and helps it not just smell like alcohol.

Broadly, smells can be broken into three categories.

Primary Aromas: grape-derivative and include fruits,

herbs, and floral notes.

Secondary Aromas: from winemaking practices and easiest to find in white wine. Examples include beer, cheese rind, or nuts.

Tertiary Aromas: from aging in bottle or oak. Normally savoury. Examples include roasted nuts, spices, vanilla, autumn leaves, tobacco, and leather.

Start broad. Is it fruity?

Red wine? Think of red, blue, and black fruits.

White wine? Think of citrus, orchard, or tropical fruits.

Once you’ve identified a scent such as citrus, you can now think if it’s more apple than lemon or more orange than lime.

This is all pretty personal to your own nose.

The same principle can be applied to floral and herb scents, but in our opinion, not many people can tell you the specific scent of geranium.

If you can detect herbs or floral notes, it’s a great start.