Start by pulling the cork from the bottle or twisting off the cap. Twist off caps are becoming common now and the wine will still taste great. So don't think you are compromising taste.

The box-style casks also contain good wine that remains fresh for days after opening.

Some people like to keep notes of their experience of drinking various wines. So my suggestions here could help you when recording your own experiences assuming you are sober enough to do so.

The first thing you can do with bottled wine is to sniff the neck of the bottle and observe the cork if any. Note the aroma from inside the bottle and the appearance of the cork.

Next, get hold of a glass. Wine tasters have special glasses that have a narrow neck so as to concentrate the smell. As a beginner, you may find it hard to pick up on many of the aromas if you use a wide necked glass.

Make sure you have a dry and polished glass. This will help show streaks of alcohol on it's inner surface as you swill the wine around in the glass.

Pour around one third of a glass full of wine. First hold the glass up in front of your eyes to observe the shading, color, darkness, bubbles, surface tension as it meets the glass and anything else you may observe.

Next swirl the wine around in the glass and notice streaks of clear alcohol running down the sides. Observe how viscous they are. Low viscosity (stickyness) is an indication of alcoholic strengh.

Swirl the wine around some more and insert your nose into the glass and inhale the vapours. Make a note of what the smell reminds you of. You have probably seen wine buffs on TV coming out with some rather wild explanations of what they are detecting.

Maybe you can smell wood, berries, chocolate or simply alcoholic fumes? With practice you can improve on your ability to describe the smell.

Finally it's time to taste the wine! Take in a generous mouthfull and swill it around in your mouth so all the taste buds of your tongue get to sample the wine.

Different areas of the tongue are responsible for different taste sensations.

Then finally swallow down the wine, ahhh!