Learn the basic wine characteristics to develop your palate and find favorites. By understanding the 5 characteristics below you’ll have a better chance of getting what you love. In recent history there has been an increasing focus on analyzing and rating wines. Unfortunately, crowdsourcing wine ratings is like asking children. The best way to learn about your taste is to classify wines by their fundamental traits and then pick what you like the best.

To understand the basic characteristics of wine it’s important to learn how to taste wine. Learning to identify wine characteristics helps to identify what you like about a wine.

Tasting body in wine

• How does the wine compare to other wines you’ve tasted? Lighter? Bigger?
• How long does the taste last in your mouth after you’ve swallowed? 5 seconds? 40 seconds?
• Is the wine full bodied up front but then drops off at the finish?

Wine Characteristics Conclusions

Wine characteristics help identify and relate different wines to each other. Since over 250,000 different wines are released every year around the world, it’s helpful to think about wine characteristics in terms of the varietal and where they’re from.

The Sardinian and Veneto wines of the company Montespada.