The wine tasting process can tell you more than you think about a wine and consists of three steps.

Look at the wine. It should look clear in a glass, if not then there could be a problem. What colour is it? White wines become deeper with age, while the more purple a red wine, the younger it is. If you compare the colour at the rim of the glass with that at the middle, then with age a red wine is lighter at the rim than the middle.

Smell the wine. Swirl the wine around the glass and then take a sniff. The swirling of the wine allows a large amount of surface area of the wine to some into contact with the air. If it smells musty, then the wine is most probably corked. If not, is the smell weak or pronounced? A stronger smell suggests that the grapes were grown in a hot climate while younger wines tend to have a more fruity smell. You may also be able to detect the bouquet of a particular grape variety.

Taste the wine. Take a mouthful and swirl it around. This is needed because different areas of the tongue detect different tastes. Here you are looking at the wine's sweetness, acidity, tannin (gives a bitter taste at the back of the tongue), body, intensity of flavour, character (fruity, floral, vegetal, spicy etc), alcohol (sensed by a warming sensation at the back of the throat), and its length (how long you can taste it after swallowing). A good wine should have a balance of these.

You can also discover something about the wine's maturity - a younger wine has a more fruity taste. Also, fruitier wines tend to be produced from hotter countries. Finally, as with the smell, different grape varieties have distinctive flavours.