7 habits of true wine connoisseurs, from a sommelier

The short answer: a true wine connoisseur is not the person with the most expensive bottles. It is the person who keeps learning, tastes with attention and loves to share. Years of serving guests in fine dining and at sea showed me the same habits again and again. None of them needs money. All of them need curiosity.

1. They never stop learning

Connoisseurs treat wine as a subject without an end. They read about a region before they open its wine, ask how a bottle was made, and remember the answer.

Start this week: pick one region for a month. Drink two or three of its wines while you read about it. One region a month is twelve a year, and that is real knowledge.

2. They taste with attention

They give the first sip ten seconds of real attention. What fruit is there? How fresh, or sour, is it? Does it dry the mouth? How long does the flavour stay? The rest of the glass is for pleasure.

Start this week: for every new wine, name one fruit, one other smell, and say whether it feels light or full. Three words are enough.

3. They write it down

Memory is a poor cellar. Connoisseurs keep notes, in a notebook or an app, so that a great bottle can be found again and a disappointing one avoided.

Start this week: photograph every label you drink and add one line: what you ate, who you were with, and whether you would buy it again.

4. They know one or two regions deeply

Many connoisseurs have a home region they know inside out: the villages, the producers, the good and the difficult years. Depth teaches more than breadth, because it trains you to notice small differences between wines that look the same on paper.

Start this week: choose the region you already like most and taste two wines from it side by side, from different villages or producers.

5. They think about food

Wine was made for the table, and connoisseurs love good food as much as good wine. They try the chef's pairing, and they know a few simple rules:

• Match the weight: light dishes with light wines, rich dishes with fuller wines.
• Acidity loves fat and salt: a crisp white with fried food or cheese.
• Tannin loves protein: a firm red with a steak.
• Sweet wine must be sweeter than the dessert, or it tastes thin.
• What grows together goes together: a region's wine with that region's food.

6. They talk about wine simply

The best connoisseurs describe a wine so that everyone at the table wants a sip. “Ripe cherries, a little earth, soft and long” beats a list of twenty descriptors. They talk about how a wine makes them feel, not about its score. Sell the feeling, not the score: it works at home just as it works on a restaurant floor.

7. They share

A connoisseur opens the good bottle for friends, brings a wine to dinner and tells its story without lecturing. Sharing is also the fastest way to learn: four people notice more in a glass than one.

Start this week: invite two friends, open three bottles of the same grape from three countries, and compare.

And the habits they don't have

• They don't judge what other people like.
• They don't chase scores or labels.
• They don't save every good bottle for an occasion that never comes.
• They don't pretend. “I don't know, tell me” is a connoisseur's sentence.

Want the words for all this? Read wine connoisseur vs sommelier and what oenophile means. For the practical side, ordering, buying, hosting and visiting wineries, see sip like a pro.

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