Most professional tasters take a good mouthful of wine and expose it to all the taste buds distributed...
Most professional tasters take a good mouthful of wine and expose it to all the taste buds distributed over the tongue and insides of the cheeks much like one would clean their mouth after brushing their teeth. I have found that taking a smaller amount and pouring it under the tongue then letting the tongue pass it to other areas is more effective because the lower cheeks have more precise and more differentiated taste buds. The tip of the tongue is best for sweetness, upper edges of the tongue for the very important aspect of acidity, and the back of the tongue for bitterness, the higher cheeks for the tannins, and the back end of the tongue and beginning of the throat for sensing if there might be too much alcohol. You will not be able to differentiate all these places and all these differences the first few times you pay attention to the taste of wine. But most people I have talked to like to take several smaller samples slowly rather than one big one and roll it around their mouth because the latter tends to blend all the tastes together for the new taster.
Most people are looking for an over all impression of the wine rather than an anatomy of the smaller parts. And that is a reasonable approach for the person who is new at trying to be more attentive to what they like in wine. After all, finding which wines you like is more important for most of us than describing to others all the parts of a wine in their mouth. That may be for tasters who are trying to impress people with how much they know but what a taster knows may have nothing to say to the average person.
The persistence of the complexity of taste on the palate and leaving a good taste at the finish when you swallow is a good indicator of quality. Wines that are inexpensive (or are expensive because they are advertised a lot) usually have too much acidity (they taste very bright and excite your mouth but have little true flavor), too much tannin (they taste very rough and lack smoothness) or they are flat and exhibit little or no taste. They are inexpensive because they are not good drinking wines so few people want them. It will take you only a few experiences with good quality wines to let you know the pleasures of the quality of what you are drinking. Look for quality first, then find the aromas and taste that please you the most. Once you have found a favorite wine, you will have found one that will likely go well with what ever you eat and whenever you want to relax and just have a pleasant glass of wine.
