The idea behind wine tasting is as simple as this: Slow down. Relax and take the time to think about what you're drinking and to enjoy it with all your senses.

Examine its color. Is it clear or hazy, transparent or opaque?

Take a deep sniff. Does it smell like fruit? Flowers? Road tar? Wood grains?

Got it? Take a drink. Take two. Swish it around your mouth, sensing not only its taste but its texture and weight. Don't worry about looks; you're enjoying yourself.

The aroma of Cabernet Sauvignon and the closely related Merlot grape, for example, often reminds me of cedar wood and pine needles mingled with a good fruit smell reminiscent of currants.

Some add hints that wine tasters call "vegetal:" green olives, green peppers, tobacco leaves or grass.

Aging the wine in oak may add touches of vanilla, cinnamon, cloves and almonds. Extended bottle aging may lend a toasty quality and impart earthy scents as variable as mushrooms, old leather, roses and wildflowers.

Other grapes have their own trademark aromas: Zinfandel often evokes berries. Pinot Noir, the fine grape of Burgundy, may recall violets and spice. The pungently floral quality of freshly ground black pepper signals Syrah, the French Rhone grape.

Among whites, Chardonnay recalls crisp, ripe apples and may add notes of butter, coconut, figs and other tropical fruits, particularly if it's aged in oak.

Riesling, the queen of German grapes, may evoke apples, too, and sometimes citrus fruit, canteloupe and pine.

Sauvignon Blanc often shows a grassy smell and sometimes grapefruit.

Chenin Blanc reminds me of melons and, occasionally, orange blossoms. A smell of peaches identifies Muscat and Gewurztraminer; the latter may add elusive spice.

3) Tastes

The feel of the wine in your mouth, its sense of lightness or weight, a quality that may range from watery-thin to viscous and oily is very much a part of the experience of tasting wine.

Sourness is a fault in wine if it reeks of vinegar, the sign of a spoiled beverage (fortunately, you'll rarely find it nowadays).

In the form of crisp, sharp acidity, however, a sour sensation is a desirable trait, offering a brisk, acidic taste that's as amiable a companion to fish as a squirt of fresh lemon.

A wine with too little acid, on the other hand, may seem mellow at first, but it's bland and uninspiring, lacking the verve to stand up to food.

Sour and sweet tastes are mixed in many California Chardonnays, which at their best are crisp, almost dry, with just enough fresh-fruit sweetness to soften the cutting acidic edge.

Finally, sweet dominates the sour in "late harvest" and other dessert- type wines, in which a penetrating sweetness identifies the style, but the sugar is balanced against sharp acid that keeps the wine from cloying.

a lot of the terms that most accurately describe frequently occurring scents in wine are not words that we usually associate with edible things. Oak, cedar and pine, for instance. Moss, leaves and grass. Yes, even tar and leather.

(Carrying this to its logical extreme, in 18th century France the aroma of fine Burgundy was more than once likened to raw sewage, to put it relatively delicately. This was intended as a compliment, something that might be difficult to comprehend unless we consider the way the French love strong cheese.)

It's also important to understand that these scents and tastes rarely dominate the wine. Typically they add a small but significant element to a larger pattern, as a colored thread might highlight woven cloth or a French horn's theme add texture to an orchestral chorus.

In other words, the hints of chocolate and coffee in some California red wines and the nuances of coconut, figs and dates in oak-aged Chardonnay don't make the wine taste like a milkshake or fruit salad; they are subtle, often elusive parts of a larger whole.

That "tarry" quality in a California Merlot that puzzled my friend, the editor, is not an unpleasant scent to me but one of great nostalgia, evoking memories of youthful hikes along the edge of country roads on hot summer days.

The French even have a name for it - gout de goudron - according to Frank Schoonmaker's Encyclopedia of Wine, which notes that the smell, "far from disagreeable ... is usually one of the characteristics of a fine red wine made from very ripe grapes."

The smell of old leather comes up often in well-aged red wine. I find it pleasant, too, more like fine old books in leather bindings than well-used shoes.

The scents of wine come from several sources. The fruity smell of young wines comes directly from the grapes, with woody and other organic aromas added if the wine was aged in oak.

Fine, aged wines add the most complex (and sometimes un-winelike) scents, which some wine tasters call "bouquet," as the result of gradual chemical reactions in the wine. Less pleasant changes in odor and taste occur if the wine is poorly or carelessly made or spoils with excess age.

Just for fun, I scanned back over years of my tasting notes and several good wine books to get an idea of the breadth of vocabulary wine tasters have used.

Emile Peynaud's "Le Gout de Vin" ("The Taste of Wine," quoted in Robert M. Parker Jr.'s "Wines of the Rhone Valley and Provence") divided wine aromas into nine principal categories:

Animal odors, smells of game, beef and venison; balsamic odors, smells of pine trees, resin and vanilla; woody odors, smells of new wood of oak barrels; chemical odors, smells of acetone, mercaptan (skunks or natural gas), yeasts, hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs), lactic and fermentation odor; spicy odors, smells of pepper, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, truffles, anise and mint; empyreumatic (creosotes and oils) odors, smells of creme brulee, smoke, toast, leather and coffee; floral odors, smells of flowers, violets, roses, lilacs, jasmine; fruity odors, smells of blackcurrants, raspberries, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, figs; and vegetal odors, smells of herbs, tea, mushrooms and vegetables.

Other frequently occurring scents include apples (a characteristic of Chardonnay and Riesling grapes); green olives, green peppers, even asparagus (typical of inexpensive red wines from some cool regions); walnuts and pecans (desirable in Sherry, a flaw in wines oxidized with age); vinegar (a breath is common in Beaujolais, more than a breath is a fatal flaw in any wine); and chalk or steel (reminiscent of licking a clean pebble or knife blade, the trademark of French Chablis and some other acidic Chardonnays).

Young wines are usually simple and straightforward, offering uncomplicated smells of grapes and fresh fruit.

It's bottle age that brings about the chemical changes that provide unusual and (one hopes) delicious nuances that cry out for descriptive terms.

FRUITY: Citrus - grapefruit, lemon; berry - blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, black currant (cassis); tree fruit - cherry, apricot, peach, apple; tropical fruit - pineapple, melon, banana; dried fruit - strawberry jam, raisins, prune, fig.

VEGETATIVE: fresh - stemmy, cut green grass, bell pepper, eucalyptus, mint; canned-cooked - green beans, asparagus, green olive, black olive, artichoke; dried - haw-straw, tea, tobacco.

NUTTY: walnut, hazelnut, almond.

CARAMELIZED: honey, butterscotch, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, molasses.

WOODY: vanilla, cedar, oak, smoky, burnt toast, charred, coffee.

EARTHY: dusty, mushroom, musty (mildew), moldy cork.

CHEMICAL: petroleum - tar, plastic, kerosene, diesel; sulfur - rubbery, garlic, skunk, cabbage, burnt match, wet wool, wet dog; papery - wet cardboard; pungent - acetic acid (vinegar); other - soapy, fishy.

PUNGENT: hot - alcohol; cool - menthol.

MICROBIOLOGICAL: yeast, sauerkraut, sweaty, horsey, "mousey."

FLORAL: orange blossom, rose, violet, geranium.

SPICY: cloves, black pepper, licorice, anise.

Use the "wheel" as a guide when you're tasting wine for fun, and I think you'll be surprised to see how well this list of descriptive terms will help you recognize those elusive characteristics.

4) Enjoy!

It's easy to do- here's how.

Preparation - Gather together:

- At least one wine glass per person;

- Some containers for anyone who wants to spit rather than swallow;

- Paper and pencil or other way to record tasting notes- white paper is also useful for holding behind the glass when looking at the color;

- Crackers or bread, and if this tasting is jsut for fun, you can serve food that goes with each wine;

- Some brown paper wine bags to cover the labels if you are going to taste "blind";

- Water for rinsing the mouth between tastings;