The basic steps of wine tasting are to assess color, swirl the wine, smell it, taste it and savor it. Hold up the glass of wine against a clean backdrop, and assess the wine’s shade and opacity. Color tells you a lot about the wine you’re drinking. An older red wine will have a darker, even brownish, color, and will be more translucent than a younger wine, which will range from purple to ruby. A young white wine will be a yellow-green. Also, some grapes produce a deeper color than others.