Right glass key to getting a taste for the good stuff!

There’s a difference between drinking and tasting, and wine deserves to be approached in both ways. To taste and to drink wine to best effect, you need to start with the optimum kind of glass.

It needs to be essentially tulip-shaped, so somewhat bulbous at the bottom, and tapering inwards at the rim. It should be made from thin glass and, ideally, have a stem.

Pour just a little wine into the glass at first. Examine it with your eye. Is it clear? How deep is the colour? Allowing plenty of room to swirl the wine it so as to bring the maximum surface area into contact with the air; you are releasing the wines aromas. Stick your nose in and inhale.

Does it smell fresh and inviting? Is it musty (which suggests a fault called cork taint)? Or oxidised and stale? (The best description of this I ever heard was ‘smells like the bottom of the fruit bowl after you’ve come back from a long holiday...’) When tasting, don’t take a delicate sip; you need a reasonable mouthful. And if you can manage to suck some air in, over or, ideally, through the wine, it will release lots of aromas and flavour elements in your mouth, many of them travelling up the back of your nose to all kinds of receptors.

Your tongue will detect the basic elements: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savoury.

This can be a noisy and messy business! So practice with white wines before moving on to the reds, and maybe do so in private, wearing a dark top... n qry this for fresh, crisp, acidityW iaurent jiquel Albarino, crance. (€NM, aunnes ptoresF n qry this for fruitinessW Pierre gaurant Beaujolais, crance. (€T.49, AldiF n qry this for round tanninsW

Ascheri kebbiolo ianghe, Italy. (€N9.95, O’Brien’sF