A Beginner’s Guide to Drinking Wine

Are you someone who wants to loves drinking wine but who doesn’t know enough about it? A lot of people want to enjoy wine and all its varieties, but they aren’t sure what to purchase when they head to the liquor store. All different sorts of online quizzes can point you toward the kind of wine you’d enjoy based on your taste interests. However, that still doesn’t prepare you for the world of wine and all there is to know about it.

To help, we’ve created a beginner’s guide to drinking wine. From understanding the different styles to learning the best ways to serve wine, we’ve got the information you need to truly fall in love!

Video Overview

Understanding the Different Styles When Drinking Wine

Your first step to drinking wine is understanding the different styles of wine. If you’re new to the wine world, you might only think of red and white wine. But there’s much more to it than that—many more intricacies make the world of wine much more vast than red and white. For example, there are dry white wines and aromatic white wines as well as light-bodied reds and dessert wines.

The world of wine features a lot of variations. Understanding the different wine styles will help you better recognize what wines you actually enjoy. Better yet, once you understand the primary styles, you’ll know how to start tasting. Going from light-bodied to heavy-bodied and knowing which ones to avoid altogether can help you transition smoothly into the world of wine.

Learn How to Serve

When you’ve gotten a better grasp of the wine styles, you’ll need to learn how to serve your wine. You may just want to pop open the bottle, pour a glass, and go, but that won’t give you the best experience. For example, serving your white wine out of your hot garage? Not ideal. Serving a red wine chilled? Not the best choice to delve into those flavors. Here are some suggestions for serving temperatures:

• Sparkling wines: Between 38 and 45° F (aim for ice-cold)
• White and Rosé wines: 38 to 45° F (aim for fridge-cold)
• Rich white wines (think Chardonnay): 45 to 55° F
• Light red wines: 55 to 60° F
• Bold red wines: 60 to 68° F (slightly cool)

In addition, think about decanting red wines before pouring. You want to open up those wines to some oxygen to get more flavor. The more you play around with serving, the more you’ll get out of the wine.

Drinking Wine: Sniffing Out Aromas

The last thing we’ll touch on in this beginner’s guide to drinking wine has to deal with actually drinking the wine. If you want to learn about the wine you’re drinking and not just sip without appreciating the intricacies, then you need to sniff out aromas. Learn which fruit flavors you’ll typically find in red and white wines, and then spin and sniff the wine before sipping to see if you can sniff out those aromas. It takes practice, but it will give you a more refined sip.