What's great about tasting wine is that the more wines you try, the more you'll develop your palate. Remember the best judge of whether a wine delivers on taste is you. There are no rights or wrongs in wine appreciation, if it suits your palate then brilliant; it's the right style of wine for you. Enjoy!

Follow these three easy steps and you can't go wrong.

Look

Fill your glass so it is no more than a quarter full.

First look directly down on the glass to see how intense the colour is.

Against a white background tilt the glass so that you can clearly see its range of colours from the centre to the rim.

As red wine ages it changes colour and starts to fade at the rim. Whereas an older white wine will become deeper. However a deep golden colour in a white may indicate the wine has been aged in oak or that it is a particularly sweet wine.

As a general rule the deepest colours usually come from the hottest climates.

Smell

First take one sniff without swirling the wine, note your first impressions, these are often the most revealing. Remember after 3 or 4 sniffs your sense of smell diminishes.

Now give the wine a good swirl, this releases all the wines aromas. Gently and slowly inhale and enjoy all the familiar and maybe not so familiar smells from your tasting memory bank.

Note the different scents that arise from swirling the wine against the scents that came your original first sniff of the static wine.

As you get experienced you will be able to tell the grape variety and where the wine's comes from just from this initial stage of smelling the wines aromas.

Taste

Take a sip, enough to fill your mouth about a third full, and then work the wine around in your mouth. It sometimes helps to suck in some air through your lips, because this helps release the flavours and aromas of the wine.

Your taste buds are distributed all over your tongue, gums and the insides of your cheeks, so chew the wine to ensure they are all covered.

Note the depth of flavour, acidity, sweetness, balance of alcohol and the tannins that exist in the wine. Are they are in harmony with each other? Can you identify any individual tastes or aromas? Is the wine light, medium or full-bodied? How long does the flavour last for, known as the length? In general the longer it lasts, the better the wine.

Finally swallow, or if you're tasting a lot of wine, spit.

Finally, and most importantly did you like it?

Now have lots of fun honing your wine tasting skills, I know I do!