Back to your stimulating conversation with Rick. You’ve already feigned interest in his latest 1-week detox diet, and now comes the inevitable silence. Not only do you and Rick have nothing in common, but you’re out of things to talk about.

In the past, you’d take another slug of wine and revive the painstaking conversation via a comment on the weather or a verbatim lie about how you’re intrigued by this preposterous diet of his. But not this time. This time, you embrace the awkward silence as you give your glass a gentle swirl.

Step 2) SWIRL

In another study, a single subject (me) drank an Argentinian Malbec that smelled like a barnyard upon opening. After about 30 minutes of air those odors blew off revealing a remarkable, delicious wine. Of course, you may not have the privilege of arriving early to ensure that your host opens the wine beforehand to allow for sufficient breathing, but swirling it in your glass will have a similar effect. Typically, the more volatile components of a freshly opened wine tend to be the less enjoyable; by swirling, these will begin to blow off leaving behind a masterpiece for your palate to behold.

Swirling the wine around in your glass will also bring in more oxygen. Why is this important? Introducing more O2 into the glass unleashes the wine’s aromas, allowing it to “open up” and for all of those wondrous fragrances to blossom.

Most importantly, swirling will make you look cool.

At this point your beloved Rick has lost interest. You’re simply not feeding his delicate ego the attention it deserves. With the raise of a brow, he extends you an “it was nice meeting you,” and moves on to the next victim.

In the past, you’d flock to the nearest friendly face. This time, you James Bond it. You hold your ground, give the glass another swirl, and stick your nose inside to smell the aromas awaiting your embrace.

Step 3) SMELL

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.” Helen Keller

There is nothing more distinctively memorable than a smell. It is is a spellbinding time machine capable of transporting us back to our fondest memories. We not only remember the good times, but we literally re-experience them physically. As the unsung hero of our five senses, smell is tragically under appreciated.

Ever tried drinking wine with your nose plugged? It may as well be water. 90% of our taste comes from smell, so don’t sell yourself short on this step. Immediately after swirling shove your schnoz deep into the glass and give the wine a powerful, wine-godly sniff and take in the various aromas.

What do you smell? Is the wine fruity, or earthy? A bit of both? Do you smell red fruits like cherries, raspberries and/or strawberries, or dark purple fruits such as blueberries, plum and black currant? Or maybe you’re smelling tobacco, wood, and pencil lead?

Perhaps you just smell plain ole red wine. One of the biggest obstacles when first attempting to really smell our wine is disassociating from “red wine” and allowing other fragrances to creep into our minds. Make no mistake, this takes training! Every time you try, even if you just “smell red wine,” you’re doing a rep. Eventually, your sense of smell will get stronger, and new scents will reveal themselves. You’ll even begin to notice certain fragrance patterns amongst different varietals. For example, Sauvignon Blanc commonly exudes aromas of green bell pepper and grapefruit.

Let your imagination run wild and trust your senses… there’s no right answer here. The more often you do this the better you’ll become at discerning different aromas.

Let’s recap what’s happened. You’ve looked at the wine and although it pretty much still “looks red,” you noted the thick tears and expect a stronger wine. You swirled the wine to blow off any festering barnyard smells and to release the wine’s true aromas. You James Bonded it and immersed your face into the glass to appreciate the scents. And now, it’s time for the grand finale.

You bring the glass to your lips, and the room comes to a stand still. You sip the wine like it’s the last you’ll ever have. Not only is your experience enhanced, but the little observations you’ve made link up with the taste to add a tiny record to your brain that you can build upon. With each passing sip you experience the transcendence of the expert, minus the lifetime of dedication. No books nor lifetime of wine tasting experience necessary.

Step 4) SIP

Before swallowing, gently swish the wine around in your mouth to hit every part of your tongue, as different regions of the tongue are better at perceiving certain tastes.

When gauging the quality of the wine, the rabbit hole of what to look for is seemingly endless. So to start, let’s focus on these three simple questions:

a) Is the wine balanced?

A recent bottle of Amarone was 16.5% alcohol (extremely high), but this was imperceptible without checking the label. All that alcohol was seamlessly stabilized by the wine’s intense tannins (a compound in the wine that causes your mouth to feel dry and, in right doses, allows the wine to age), fruit, and acidity (this is what makes you salivate). In other words, the wine was “balanced”. Balance simply implies that there’s harmony between the different sensations (e.g., alcohol, tannin, etc.) you detect when drinking the wine where no single element sticks out like a sore thumb.

b) How long is the finish?

Many inexpensive wines are rather pleasant on the nose and taste great on the way down, but once you’ve swallowed the taste vanishes leaving you with a short to nonexistent “finish”. You’ll find that high quality wines, on the other hand, leave their mark on your senses long after you’ve imbibed.

c) Do I like this wine?

At the end of the day, this is what really matters.