Sticking your beak in important for tasting wine flavours

Get someone to apply a blindfold and clip your nose with a peg then see if you can tell the difference between milk chocolate and a chunk of cheddar cheese. It's a piece of advice given, I believe, by Jancis Robinson, Britain's Grande Dame of wine to illustrate the importance of sticking your nose in the glass when you're tasting wine.

And a piece of advice repeated by me this week when I asked a generous, and slightly offended host, not to fill my glass to the top because you need to be able to swirl and sniff the wine to get a handle on the flavour.

He obliged but was clearly not convinced.

So I suggested that he forget the blindfold, just pinch his nose and tell me which of the cups I would give him was filled with black coffee, which with black tea?

He wisely gave a nervous chuckle, declined and promptly filled the next guest's glass to overflowing, leaving me to wonder once again how much of the wine we drink actually manages to deliver all of its many pleasures and how much is tossed over the tonsils without a thought – or even a sniff.

To taste anything it must first be encouraged to release the molecules that excite nerve cells in the mouth or those in the olfactory area at the top of the nose which process flavours.

In the case of food this is done by chewing wine by swirling it in the glass to give off vapours.

Hence the need to sniff the wine, though some of the flavour molecules do make their way to the olfactory area from the back of the mouth without any urging.

The nerves, or the tastebuds in the mouth, are sensitive only to the basic tastes – generally those on the tip of the tongue to sweetness; on the upper edges of the tongue to acidity, or sourness; the back of the tongue to bitterness; the front edges to saltiness, though these are rarely if ever triggered by wine.

The mouth is also sensitive to tannin, the often bitter red wine preservative that occurs naturally in grape pips and skins and puckers the cheeks in much the same way as cold tea.

"Heat" indicates high or excessive alcohol and a prickly sensation is caused by carbon dioxide.

And while we're on the subject of taste, let's also look at the simple difference between sweet and dry wines.

Most wines are dry, which means that all, or virtually all, the sugar in the juice from the grapes is fermented into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

If there is residual sugar then, depending on the amount, the wines will be either off-dry, medium or sweet.

Some palates can also be fooled into thinking wine is sweet by the flavours generated by sweet fruits, oak (butterscotch, caramel and vanilla) and alcohol.

To get the hang of it all try sniffing, swirling and slurping some of these:

Richmond Plains 2010 Nelson Pinot Gris, about $19.99: An organic pears and stonefruit wine with a lovely silken texture built around the 6.9 grams per litre of residual sugar. Medium-dry with 14.5 per cent alcohol.

Bouldevines 2010 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, about $19: A clean, almost bone dry (less than one per cent residual sugar) citrus-inspired wine herb and tomato leaf and a mineral streak that gives it style and finesse.

Johanneshof 2010 Marlborough Gewurztraminer, about $28: A luscious sweeter (medium) style wine made by one of our top gewurztraminer producers. Spicy with trademark Turkish Delight and lychee flavours.

Aurum 2010 Central Otago Pinot Noir, about $32 (2006 vintage pictured): A Bannockburn pinot that punches well above its weight. Rich, generous and intensely fruited it flows effortlessly across the palate. Excellent buying. Dry.

Seifried Winemakers Collection 2009 Sweet Agnes Riesling, $20: This wine has over the years earned more gongs than American general. Seriously sweet (195 grams of residual sugar) and succulent with stonefruit flavours and clean finish.