Ideally, white wine should be tasted at 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit and red wines about five degrees warmer . White wines are the easiest to evaluate , reds can challenge or tire your palate sooner , and dessert wines can be most difficult of all. In our monthly tastings we never taste more than six different wines and encourage people to not finish every sample. Not only is too much wine a distorter of your tasting, but we want safe drivers on the road, too. Begin with the lightest, driest white and move toward finishing with the most complex and heaviest red, or with the dessert wines if any.
Many tastings begin with champagne as an aperitif or welcoming wine.
Judging the color of a wine provides a sense of anticipation as well as potentially spotting that one in a hundred wine sample that is corked or otherwise bad. Hold the sample up to natural light to look for clarity. The wine may be brilliant or it may be cloudy. Cloudy does not necessarily mean bad as it can show the wine was not overly filtered. I personally enjoy unfiltered cabernets a great deal.