Tasting wine deliberately is a skill anyone can learn, and it transforms how much you enjoy — and how well you buy — Australian wine. The goal is not to sound like a critic; it is to build a mental library of flavours so you can predict what you will like before you spend money. This guide walks through the Five S's, the essential vocabulary, and how to build a cellar that actually gets drunk. In 2026, with Australian exports worth $2.48 billion and premium regions like the Barossa and Margaret River competing hard for domestic drinkers, tasting skill is also a money-saving skill.

The Five S's of Wine Tasting

See: hold the glass against white paper (or a white tablecloth) and look at the wine's colour and clarity. Red wines fade from deep purple in youth to brick-red and brown at the edges with age; whites deepen from pale straw to golden. The rim tells you age, not quality. Swirl: swirling aerates the wine, releasing volatile aroma compounds — it also coats the glass so you can see the "legs" (glycerol and alcohol), which hint at body. Smell: this is where 70 per cent of wine's flavour lives. Take short sniffs, then a deep one. Identify fruit (what kind?), then non-fruit (oak, spice, earth, floral), then anything unusual. Sip: take a small sip and let it coat your whole mouth. Notice the attack (first flavours), the mid-palate (body and fruit), and the finish (how long flavours linger after you swallow — a long finish is the single best quality signal). Savour: swallow or spit, then assess. Was it balanced? Too acidic, too tannic, too sweet, or in harmony?

The Mechanism of Flavour

Understanding the chemistry makes tasting easier. Acidity (from tartaric, malic and citric acids) gives wine its freshness and makes your mouth water — cool-climate wines like Clare Riesling and Yarra Pinot have more of it. Tannins (from grape skins and oak) bind to proteins in your saliva, creating that drying, grippy sensation — they are the backbone of Cabernet and Shiraz, and they soften with age. Alcohol adds body and warmth, and can make wines taste sweet or hot. Oak contributes vanilla, spice, toast and smoke, and its influence depends on barrel age, size and toast level. Residual sugar is the sweetness you actually taste, balanced against acidity. Every Australian wine is a negotiation between these five components — tasting is just noticing the negotiation.

Essential Tasting Terms

Build a working vocabulary: body (weight in the mouth — light, medium, full); tannin (grip — fine, firm, grippy); acidity (freshness — crisp, racy, flabby if lacking); oak (vanilla, toast, coconut if American, cedar if French); fruit character (primary flavours from the grape — red fruits, black fruits, citrus, stone fruit); secondary character (fermentation and oak-derived — bread, cream, spice); tertiary character (age-derived — leather, honey, mushroom, dried fruit); length (the finish); balance (all components in harmony); complexity (many layers that unfold). You do not need 50 terms — these 10 cover 90 per cent of what you will read on this site and anywhere else.

Building a Cellar

A practical cellar is not a collection of trophies — it is a pipeline of wine for drinking over the next 5–10 years. The mechanism of cellaring: bottle-aged wines develop tertiary flavours as tannins polymerise (softening grip) and fruit aromas evolve toward savoury complexity. The best candidates from this site's regions: Barossa Shiraz (10–20 years), Hunter Semillon (5–15), Margaret River Cabernet (10–20), Clare Riesling (5–15), Yarra Pinot and Chardonnay (5–10). Storage conditions matter more than the wine: 12–15°C constant temperature, 60–75 per cent humidity, no light, minimal vibration, bottles on their side. A $300 wine fridge beats a $300 bottle of wine if your house runs warm — heat ages wine fast, and a hot summer in an Australian garage can ruin a vintage in months.

Actionable Tasting Steps

Buy two bottles of the same wine and taste one now, one in 12 months — the fastest way to learn how wine ages.
Taste blind: cover the bottle and guess the grape and region before looking. You will learn more in one session than in a year of label-reading.
Use a structured tasting note: appearance, nose, palate, finish — four lines, no jargon required.
Spit at tastings with more than three wines; your palate (and judgement) stays sharper.
Keep a simple log of what you liked and why — within a year you will be a better buyer than most retail staff.