Wine Tasting for Beginners

I know very little about wine, except that I like what I like. So, some friends (who know as much as I do) and I have decided to educate ourselves. Our first wine tasting is set for next month. I'm looking forward to learning about this.

Here's what I've learned thus far:

There are three types of wine tastings:

General Tasting - There are no limitations on the wines that you involve. You may choose to limit the wines to a particular part of the world, or grape variety, or price range, or whatever criteria you select.

Horizontal Tasting - A Horizontal Tasting involves wines from the same vintage. You decide the vintage and any other limitations on the wines involved, such as grape variety, but, the wines will all be from a single vintage. A horizontal tasting is a good way to see which winery was most successful within a given year.

Vertical Tasting - A vertical tasting involves wines from different vintages but all the wines will come from the same winery. If the winery produces more than one type of wine, you would select a single wine from that winery and taste multiple vintages of that wine.

Information courtesy of http://www.cellarnotes.net/.