Wine's Time Lifting A Glass At A Tasting Is A Good Way To Get To The Bottom Of Wine's Mysteries.

Gregory Moore takes it as his mission to debunk many of the myths that surround wine tasting. Standing before a group of 50 well-suited and scarved young professionals, each sitting before a strange-looking lineup of empty wine glasses, Moore demonstrates how to swirl wine in the glass, which enhances the smell of the wine, and therefore the taste. This is one ritual that Moore supports. But ask him about sniffing the cork a waiter hands you after opening your bottle, or tipping your glass over and back again to measure the wine's ``legs,'' and you'll get a scowl. He has a particular dislike for wines that are advertised, or that tout their glowing reviews.

``If it's cheap and it's a famous label, forget it. If you've ever seen it on TV or in Esquire magazine, don't buy it,'' he tells the crowd. By this point, on our third sampling of wine, we are willing to believe anything that Moore, who is a wine consultant and was a sommelier at Le Bec-Fin for more than 20 years, tells us.

Of course, some of the seemingly pretentious acts performed when tasting a good wine can indeed enhance the experience. And, it seems, more and more Americans are partaking of the experience, by purchasing and appreciating better wines. Over the last five years, wine consumption in the United States has been rising steadily, with a total of 523 million gallons consumed in 1997, or about 1.95 gallons per person, according to the Wine Institute, a California-based clearinghouse. Cheap jug wine used to constitute 80 percent of our wine consumption, but upscale wines have been gaining ground in the last five years; they now account for 50 percent of the wine purchased.

With increasingly sophisticated tastes comes a growing interest in learning more about the differences between, say, a Barolo and a Pomerol, or a chardonnay from the Napa Valley and one from Australia. This kind of information is valuable not only when you're spending anywhere from $10 to $100 a bottle; it also pays off when you're entertaining business clients - or dates - and trying very hard to impress them with your worldliness.

Most wine experts agree that while reading up on the subject may be helpful, the best way to learn about wines is by tasting them. Luckily for us, there are a number of opportunities to taste wine throughout the region, in the form of wine seminars, classes, organizations and dinners.