This month at Chef Mavro restaurant on King Street, I'm offering a free mini-class for our dinner guests to answer all the questions I'm often asked about how to taste wines.

One of the most frequently asked questions: How did you learn about wine? Well, when I first got into wine, there were no schools to go to. You had to teach yourself or learn from others. Read about all the wine regions, grape varietals, growing techniques, fermentation, and tasting notes in various magazines, and taste as much wine as possible. Being in the restaurant business and working with some amazing wine lists along the way, I was able to taste thousands of wines and started to learn the subtle differences between grape varietals and wine regions.

I could read as many tasting notes as I wanted, but not many of them stuck to memory until I was actually able to taste the wine myself and take my own mental tasting notes. Everyone's palate and nose differ, so what you might think is blackberry, I might call blueberry. The biggest problem when I started out was I knew how to drink wine and enjoyed it very much, but I didn't know how to taste wine.

Finally, about six years into my restaurant career, I met the best wine taster in my life. He is a very knowledgeable sommelier who is a great taster and teacher. He spent many, many hours with me teaching me the intricacies of wine tasting.

The first and most important lesson I learned was that when tasting wine, you should follow the same pattern or check list when evaluating the wine. I find I still do this with every new wine I taste, although most of the time it's a quick evaluation and then on to enjoying the wine, but it's about forming habits.

There are three main ways to evaluate each wine: sight, smell and taste. Follow the same check list with each category, in the same order for each category, every time you evaluate wines. Then after you are able to compile all that you learned you can draw your own conclusion about the wine.

Start with the appearance of the wine. What color is it? Is the wine bright in the glass or dull in color? Is it clear or cloudy? Does it have bubbles? Is it the same color from the center of the glass to the rim? When you swirl the glass, do "legs" form on the glass and do they fall back into the glass fast or slowly as they make their way down the glass? All these things give you ideas about what grape variety the wine might be, where it's from, how old it is, etc., especially when you start getting into blind tasting of wines. Just from looking at the wine you might be able to discern if the wine is from a hot wine growing region or a cooler one, or maybe a hot vintage. For example, watching the "legs" run back down the glass gives you a clue of how much alcohol is in the wine. If they run fast back down into the glass or don't really form at all, the wine is of lower alcohol levels. If they are thick and slowly make their way back down, there is more alcohol in the wine.

Next, move on to the nose of the wine. The first thing you should notice is, is the wine sound and free from faults? Is the wine corked, oxidized or maderized? Is it supposed to be oxidized or maderized? Maybe you know the answer to this last question already from your visual analysis and initial smell.

Next, think about what fruits you smell in the wine. Try and pick out at least three. Do you smell any spices or flowers? What kind of spices? Is the wine herbaceous, earthy, do you smell any hints of oak? Two clues into oak characteristics are vanilla and toasted coconut aromas. Vanilla usually means that it was French Oak barrels used for the wine and toasted coconut usually leads you to American Oak. What wine growing regions use French Oak barrels which use American Oak barrels?

Finally, you get to taste the wine. What are your first impressions? Again, is the wine sound on the palate? Did you miss something on the nose? Slurp in air so you can really taste the wine, move it to all corners of your mouth. What is the acidity level of the wine? Is its feel in the back of your checks biting or soft? Is the wine hot and full-bodied, or lighter-bodied? This gives you an idea of the alcohol level. The "body" of the wine is a direct correlation of the level of alcohol in the wine and nothing else. Are there gripping tannins in the wine or are they subtle? Tannins are felt in the front of your mouth around you gums and lips. Is the wine sweet or dry? This is a direct correlation of sugar left in the wine after fermentation. Is the wine dry but with really ripe fruit? This is often confused with being sweet, so be careful as this is different than a sweet wine!

What fruit flavors do you taste? Any earth notes on the palate? Does the wine have a long finish or does it end after you spit the wine out? Yes, you should be spitting if you are "tasting" wine, especially a lot of wine. Are you picking up any hints of oak that we discussed on the nose? Is the wine more fruity or earthy or floral?

In the most generic terms wines that are lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, and more earthy than fruity are wines from the "old world," a term to describe the wines from Europe. If they are more fruit-forward, lower in acidity and higher in alcohol, they tend to be from the "new world," meaning the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, South America, etc.

After tasting many wines and knowing what they are, you can move to blind tasting. When blind tasting, you can use all the clues you have now accumulated and can make an educated guess as to what grape or grape varietals are in the wine, where the wine is from — sometimes even down the vin — yard site or who made it, and how old the wine is.

I believe every palate, as long as you can smell and taste things, can be trained with enough practice and discipline in wine tasting. A good way to train your nose and mouth is to put it to work. Go to the grocery store and really smell fruits and vegetables. Pull spices out of the cupboard and shut your eyes and smell them. Go to the florist and stick you nose in some flowers. They make scented oils you can buy to practice smelling about 150 different scents in wine. They are expensive, but they are out there. Eventually, you will be able to pull these same scents out of the wines you are tasting and you will start seeing similarities in varietals and regions. Then the whole mysterious puzzle will come together!

"Wine Tasting Tips," a 30-minute mini-class, will be offered at 5:30 p.m. every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in June. The classes are free and open to all dinner guests at Chef Mavro. Advance reservations are required, however.

Todd Ashline is sommelier /restaurant director at Chef Mavro restaurant, 1969 S. King St., www.chefmavro.com.