How to taste wine and spirits, and what the notes actually mean

Tasting is a skill you need, not a test of money or access. You should drink what you like, and this guide is here to help you do it with confidence.

Most people have read a tasting note and felt left out. Blackcurrant, graphite, forest floor, a hint of violets. You taste the wine and get "red, good." That doesn't mean your palate is broken. It means nobody explained the code. Tasting notes are a language, and like any language, a little grammar goes a long way.

The goal here isn't to make you talk like a sommelier. It's to help you notice more, so you can say why you like a bottle, try something new, and pick well when you're put on the spot.

Most of what you taste, you smell

Your tongue only picks up a handful of things: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. Everything else, from cherry to vanilla to smoke, comes from your nose, including the aromas that rise up the back of your throat as you swallow. Hold your nose and a fine wine tastes like sour grape juice.

That's why tasters swirl and sniff before they sip. Swirling pushes aroma into the air, and a long sniff gives your nose most of the information before the wine hits your tongue.

Why a wine can taste like graphite

Nobody is licking pencils. Tasting words are comparisons, and most of them fall into one of three kinds.

Some are the same molecule. A handful of tasting words are literal. Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc often smell of green bell pepper because they contain the same aroma compounds, called pyrazines, that bell peppers do. Syrah can smell of black pepper because it shares a compound, rotundone, with peppercorns. Bourbon smells of vanilla because the charred oak barrels it ages in release vanillin, the main flavor in vanilla beans. When a note says "pepper," it may mean pepper exactly.

Some are memory shortcuts. Most notes work like describing a face: "she looks like your cousin." Graphite is one of these. It points at a dry, dusty, mineral smell, like a freshly sharpened pencil, that shows up in structured Cabernets. There's no pencil lead in the wine. The word just gets you close to the smell faster than a paragraph would.

Some describe a feeling, not a flavor. "Grippy," "silky," "hot" and "round" are about what the drink does in your mouth. They're some of the most useful notes there are, and the easiest to learn.

So when a note lists six fruits and a mineral, read it as "here's roughly where to look," not a checklist you're failing.

The five things worth noticing

Forget the fancy words for a minute. These five tell you almost everything about a wine, and you can feel every one of them tonight.

Sweet or dry. Most wine is dry, meaning there's no sugar left. Ripe fruit can make a dry wine seem sweet, which is normal. Ask yourself whether it tastes like fruit or like dessert.

Acidity. It makes your mouth water. High acid tastes fresh and bright, like biting a green apple. Low acid feels soft and round. If you're salivating after you swallow, that's the acid.

Tannin. That drying, grippy feeling on your gums and the inside of your cheeks, the same one you get from strong black tea. It comes from grape skins, seeds and oak, so it's mostly in reds. Tannin isn't a flaw. It's what lets a red stand up to a fatty steak.

Body. The weight of the wine in your mouth. Light-bodied feels like skim milk, full-bodied like whole milk or cream. Alcohol adds a lot of it, which is why a big Napa red feels heavy.

Finish. How long the taste lasts after you swallow. A few seconds is short. If you're still tasting it half a minute later, that's a long finish, and it's usually a sign of a well-made wine.

Spirits work the same way, with more heat

Everything above applies to whiskey, tequila and rum, with a few changes.

Nose it gently. At 40% alcohol and up, a deep sniff mostly smells like burning. Hold the glass a little below your nose, keep your mouth slightly open, and take small, easy sniffs.

Take a small first sip. Let it coat your mouth and swallow. The first sip resets your palate to the alcohol, and the second one is where the flavor shows up.

Add a few drops of water. It takes the edge off the heat and often opens up aromas you couldn't find before. It's not cheating. Master distillers do it.

Know where the flavor comes from. Most of a bourbon's vanilla, caramel and toast comes from the new charred oak barrel. Spice in a whiskey usually means more rye in the grain. The smoke in an Islay Scotch like Lagavulin comes from peat, which is burned to dry the barley. Tequila tastes of cooked agave, often with black pepper and citrus, and the aging on the label (blanco, reposado, añejo) tells you how much oak to expect.

How to get better

Tasting is a skill, and it improves the way any skill does: with comparison and a little attention.

Taste two side by side. It's much easier to notice acid, tannin or body when you have something to compare against. Pour a Pinot Noir next to a Cabernet and the difference in tannin is obvious in one sip.

Smell everything. The best tasters are people who pay attention in the kitchen. Smell the vanilla, the black pepper, the blackberries, the cedar box. You're building the memory bank that the notes point to.

Write down one word. Not a paragraph. One word for how it tasted and one for how it felt. After a few months, you'll see your own preferences in black and white.

Trust yourself. If you taste strawberry and the label says cherry, you're both describing the same neighborhood. There are no wrong answers, only more and less useful ones.

Know what doesn't matter. The "legs" running down the glass tell you about alcohol and sugar, not quality. Price tells you about scarcity and marketing as much as taste. The best bottle is the one you enjoy with the food in front of you.

How to read the notes on this site

Every bottle in Drinks is written the same way, so once you've read one, you can read them all:

• Tastes like: two or three everyday flavors.
• Feels like: body, dryness and tannin or heat, in plain terms.
• Pour it with: recipes from this site, and why they work together.

If a note ever uses a word you don't know, it should be explained right there. If it isn't, that's my mistake, not yours.