Napa Valley harvest: it’s not merely picking the grapes. In these videos you’ll see how, when and what’s next, all of which are crucial keys to quality.

Why even bother to blind taste? The greatest value to the exercise is to assess a wine’s quality without having your impressions–positive or negative–influenced by the label. So I often blind taste multiple wines of a category, say New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or French NV Champagne, so that only what emerges from the glass (not reputation, a critic’s high score, or price point) drives my conclusion. It’s always fun, often surprising, and occasionally, when upstart or value wines make the top of the heap, a really great day.

The classic wine grapes and regions all have a “tell”–a set of sensory traits that help wine pros ID them blind. Here are some of the blind tasting clues this bad-ass group of somms shared during a recent blind tasting practice at my house–following an intensive day of testing wine theory, blind tasting and service at the prestigious, invite-only Rudd Roundtable.