There are differing views on what the ideal temperature for wine is. Generally speaking, white wine is served chilled, and red wine is served at room temperature, though some people think that it's fine to serve red wine at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, rather than 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are a number of ways to open a bottle of wine. If you have a corkscrew, embed the tip of the corkscrew into the center of the cork, hold the corkscrew vertically, then rotate it in, making sure that your hands don't get in the way of any levers.

If you don't have a corkscrew, you can push the corkscrew into the bottle via any kind of thin metal or wooden rod (such as the back of a wooden spoon). To do this, push against the sides of the cork, one side at a time, until the cork enters the wide section of the bottle. Note: this process may take 5-10 minute, depending on how tight the cork is in the bottle.

Swirling the wine will help release the wine's aromas and flavors.

To smell the wine, put your nose as close to the wine as possible. Try to smell unique flavors such as strawberry, cherry, currant, or spice for a red wine, or citrust, flowers, or fruit for a white wine.

You can usually just let the wine breathe by taking out the cork and letting it sit for about an hour. Some wines can require as much as a day to fully aerate, so to speed up this process, you can put the wine in a decanter. Putting the wine in a wine glass can speed up the breathing process as well.

Why let a wine breathe? Aerating the wine will usually bring out additional flavors and aromas in the wine as well as give it a fuller and better-rounded taste. Certain wines require breathing more than others, and generally speaking, wines that cost less than 10 dollars do not need to breathe.

After letting the wine breathe, it's time to give the wine a second sniff. This time, you should be able to detect additional flavors and aromas.

First, take a small sip and move it around in the front of your mouth. The quantity of this first sip should be about one third of an fluid ounce. Make sure that the wine touches as many surfances in the front of your mouth so that it will be distributed evenly amongst your many taste buds. You can also balance the wine in the front of your mouth by making a sucking noise, and still keeping the wine between your lips and teeth.

Once you've moved the wine around the front of your mouth, slowly let it fall backwards in your mouth and throat. Once swallowed, sit back, and concentrate on the different flavors of the wine, as detected by the many taste buds that have been in contact with it. If someone else is tasting the wine with you, find out what wines he or she is detecting, and see if you can detect those flavors as well.