Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl

How do you drink wine? As Lauren Bacall might put it, you just pucker up your lips and sip -- right? After all, meaningful, authentic, even enviable wine experiences have been had by millions-and especially millions of peasants involved in harvesting grapes -- who did no more than that. However, since our goal here is to learn, gain insight, and class up the joint, we're going to do a little more.

The plan when tasting Zinfandel is to taste five iterations of the grape, to get a sense of what it tastes like, and whether you like it. To do that you'll contrast both top shelf and bottom shelf; you'll contrast terroir-driven, or site-specific single-vineyard wines with one another; you'll taste the most critically lauded version of the wine; and you'll taste a late-harvest to learn what the grape tastes like fully ripe.