Color:

States the color (e.g., red, purple, brick) and intensity of the color (e.g. deep, medium, light) of the wine. Often times color is not noted, especially if the color is typical for whatever type of wine (aka varietal) you are drinking.

Aroma:

The most important part of the wine, aka the nose, or bouquet. Because the nose detects thousands of different scents, and the tongue only detects four tastes (sweet/sour/bitter/salt), the vast majority of text in wine reviews revolves around what aromas your nose can deduce from the wine. However, it can be very hard to put into words what it is you smell, and many rookie reviewers falter here. Describing the nose can involve many words, from fruity (cherry, strawberry, raspberry, etc) to citrusy (lemon, pineapple, etc) to everything in between (chocolate, nutty, bell peppers, etc). Use this PDF file to try and jostle your scent memory.

Texture:

Often described as mouthfeel, tasters often use words like silky, raw, rough, heavy, light, watery, or creamy to describe the weight and feel of the wine. The classic example to illuminate mouthfeel is to imagine the different textures of milk as it progressively adds fat: non-fat, 2%, whole, half and half, heavy cream. As the fat increases, the texture goes from watery to silky to thick or heavy.

Taste:

The taste of a wine, despite the name, is still all about the nose. Wine tasters typically aerate the wine in their mouth by swishing it around and sucking air through pursed lips to get some of the wine (in aerosol form) back into the nasal cavity. This can be hard for beginners to grasp, but truly the nose tells all and if this aeration did not happen, then the taste would only be a combination of sweet, sour, salty, or bitter -- and that would be pretty boring.

So why is the taste important if we've already covered the aroma of the wine? This is because the wine will present different flavors as it sits in your mouth, from the initial attack as it hits your tongue, to the mid-palate, to the finish (which we will cover next). Sometimes however, the wine will present a consistent front of flavor, from the nose, to the mid-palate, to the finish, and in these cases the wine review may be a short description of the aromas only, with the taste noted as "consistent" with the nose. However, if you do note different flavors as the wine mingles with your palate, note them here utilizing words from the previously mentioned aroma PDF.

Finish:

A wine finish is the lingering sensation that wine leaves in your mouth after you swallow the wine. Typically, finish is described in both length and flavors. The length is the amount of time you continue to perceive flavors after you have swallowed. Length is described as long (flavor persists more than 8 seconds), medium (persists for 4-5 seconds), or short (flavors dissipate very quickly). Finish can also contain more taste adjectives (woody, cherry, earthy, etc) if the finish has evolving flavors that present themselves.