Refining the palate is essential to understanding and fully enjoying good, quality foods or beverages, most notably wine. The varieties of wine in the world are as rich and vast as the grapes that produce them, each with their own unique flavors and aromas—all completely meaningless without the palate to properly enjoy them. While refining the palate may take some time and concentration, it can be accomplished with a little practice and patience.
Step One
Choose a wine that you find pleasing to the taste. Wines, as with the grapes they are made from, come in a wide variety of flavors. Reds tend to be more full bodied and stay with the palate much longer than whites, which tend to be lighter and fruitier. As you will taste many different wines in this particular variety in order to refine your palate, you should enjoy what you are drinking.
Step Two
Swirl the wine in your glass and allow it to sit and aerate or "breathe." Aerating the wine will maximize the wine's exposure to the air, allowing the wine to warm, thus releasing the wine's aromas and subtle flavors allowing you to pick out the wine's different characteristics. In general, all wines should benefit from being allowed to breathe for about 15 to 20 minutes.