Vino lovers can choose from 25 wines by the glass and 70 by the bottle. The bar’s sommeliers chose what to carry after tasting more than 700 wines. The regularly changing list spans the globe, focusing on smaller producers that might be hard to find elsewhere. Winemakers regularly come in to host tastings and dinners, and all of the bottles can be purchased to take home for a lesser fee. If you’re looking to experiment and expand your palette, try a $12 flight for the chance to sample three takes on the same type of wine.

The small food menu is meant to complement wine and will change with the seasons. The top entree is plantain-crusted ahi tuna served rare with a sweet potato chorizo tamale. A plate of three cheeses from Europe and the United States changes multiple times a week to pair with whatever wines are being highlighted in the flights. Other options include poached octopus salad, crab cakes and steamed mussels tossed with garlic, basil and tomatoes.

Park Avenue Wine Bar is located in the village center of Barrington at 205 Park Avenue, one block from the Metra train station and the intersection of Lake Cook Road and 59.

Check it out: parkavenuewinebar.com

During a wine tasting, should I spit or swallow the wine? It depends. If you are tasting a lot of wine, you should probably spit so you can truly appreciate the taste of the wine rather than the effect of it. If you are only tasting a couple of vintages it would be a shame to waste it.

Final Thoughts

A few more points to remember:

• No smoking
• No perfume or cologne
• No table talk let everyone finish the tasting before expressing your opinion.

Most wine experts just follow a set of rules when they taste wine and write reviews.

The Process

The process to follow whenever you taste wine whether it be in the comfort of your own home, at a winery, or even at a restaurant is:

The 5 S’s. Which are: See, Swirl, Smell, Sip, Savor.

See - Basically note the color of the wine. Put the glass on a angle, against a light back ground if possible. As a general rule, heavier wines will be deeper in color.

Swirl - I’m sure everyone has seen this done a myriad of times. If you are a beginner and find it really hard to swirl fluently – place the glass on the table, hold it at its stem and make small circles on the table. This is the cheats way to get nice swirl.

The swirl has two main purposes. 1. Allow the wine to breath, which opens up the smell and taste of the wine and 2. To see how viscous the wine is by the “legs” that will run back down the side of the glass.

Smell - pretty self explanatory. I won’t get into too much detail here, but this should be about enjoying the scent of the wine.

Sip - Finally, we get to drinking hey? It is a good idea to hold it in your mouth for a few seconds, to allow your taste buds to fully absorb the flavor. During this step you are basically trying to govern the texture, flavors and weight of the wine.

Savor - This step basically is to explain/note the aftertaste that you get of the wine.

If this process is new to you, depending on who your drinking the wine with, it is probably best to stick to very broad and generic terms when describing both the smell and taste of the wine.

Things such as: “fruity”, “sweet”, “dry”, “strong” (heavy), “smooth”, even things like “nice” or ” not very nice” still will give perception that you have done it before.

At the end of the day, If you don’t think the wine is nice and drinkable it does not matter what an expert has once said about the wine. So don’t be afraid to have confidence in your own palate.

If you feel like getting adventurous. There are actually some tools which can help you in the tasting description process.

A really handy tool when learning a lot of the descriptors of wine is the Aroma Wheel. This really simplifies the your description database.

Also, check out here for an extensive list of common descriptors and what they mean when they are used in wine circles and on the back of labels. Finally some sense to the descriptions on the back of bottles!

Take Action

Next time you have some wine, whether it is at home, at a friends place or in a restaurant, remember the 5 S’s and go through the process. Remember to take your time going through the process even if your friends don’t. They will be asking you questions in no time, which is never a bad thing. Taking time is the key, which will allow you to consciously taste the wine and remember it in the future.