In the world of wine tasting, the Swirl Girls are always trying to better describe what they’re drinking, smelling, seeing. While it would seem there are endless ways to describe things, wine descriptions usually use 50 or so well-loved words, depending on whether it’s a red or white wine.

So when my October issue of Food And Wine magazine arrived, with the article, “Train yourself to be a better wine taster,” I went hunting for some new descriptions, and some new ideas about tastings.

Bacon. Lychee. Pencil shavings (really?). Lime zest. Rock.

The suggested exercise to build your aroma sense is to blindfold yourself, and have someone set these items in front of you. Then sniff away. “Aroma accounts for the majority of our taste, anyway,” says one of the story’s sources, Master Sommelier Shayn Bjornholm.

Very true. And the items listed will steer you in the right directions for describing your next glass of vino. Wines can smell or taste like leather, grass, oak, butter, a bouquet of flowers, coconut, licorice, or anything you taste or smell. Whatever you experience is right, for you. You are a wine taster, no matter how many wines you’ve tried. To learn more, you need to try a wider variety than your usual two or three regular bottles.

To help you expand your comfort level, the article focuses on the six main areas in tasting: body, tannins, acidity, sweetness, flavor and oak. For each, there are tasting exercises, advice from the pros and then wine suggestions.

Does it take some time and effort on your part to do this? Yes. Heck, yes. Is it worth it? That’s totally up to you – I’m going to use some of the “herbal to savory” wine suggestions to see if I get the pencil shavings (2008 Chateau Marlartci-Lagraviere, Bordeaux) or bacon (2007 E. Guigal Brune et Blonde de Guigal Cote-Rotie).

Here are some recent red wine tastings; I found a few gems:

2008 Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Vineyard, Alexander Valley, Calif. ($17.99, Total Wine; $19.99, ABC; $21.93, Crown)

This has a juicy berry nose, full of licorice, raspberry, strawberry and just smells wonderful. The taste is as juicy as the nose, which is also a wonderful thing: very yummy with dark cherries, more raspberry, some spice and a slight earthiness. It’s a fuller-bodied wine that benefited from an aerator, and that was after leaving it open for two hours beforehand. I will buy this in the future.

2010 Echelon Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley Collection, Calif. ($11.53 online)

This was a recent favorite, starting with the pretty rose-purple wine color, and going into a nose of blackberry, deep cherry, currants and a full, dark fruit nose. On palate, it had lots of dark berries, too, with cinnamon, cocoa notes, a smooth mouthfeel and a long, smooth finish. It’s a nice, bold wine and was great with burgers.

2009 Amapola Creek Zinfandel, Monte Rosso Vineyards, Sonoma Valley, Calif. ($36, online)

This wine needs a long time to open, and I’d suggest a half-day open in the bottle before using it. The nose was tough to identify, because the wine is so hot (meaning alcohol content, which was 16.1 percent!). Being a zinfandel, and one sourced from old vines, there were many levels of tastes in this. Definitely some dark fruit on the nose, with some cinnamon and cloves, slight leather and oak. On palate, it’s a lot lighter than the nose led me to believe. It’s a very pleasant, elegant wine, with clove, black cherry and cinnamon. It was good with steak; food definitely toned down the alcohol and brought through the cherry-cinnamon-vanilla notes taste.