“I don’t know anything about wine,” said the woman next to me as she looked deeply into a glass of tawny port at a recent wine tasting. “But I do know one thing,” she continued as she took a big sip of the wine, “I know what I like.”

The fact is, she knows all she really needs to know about wine — what she likes. And, in reality , she likely knows more than she thinks she knows about wine. And the hope is, she will be inspired enough by what is in her glass of tawny port to want to learn more about the basics of wine.

While wine is, at its core, a sensation for the senses, it is one of those things that can produce even more pleasure if you take the time to dig deeper and learn more about it.

SEMINARS and CLASSES

Wine is a social lubricant. And there is no better way to enhance your wine knowledge than by tasting and discussing the merits of wine with others who are tasting the same thing.

The key is finding places to do that. Without a doubt, the clearest path are the seminars, classes or tastings that let you interact with both wine professionals and other drinkers.

Start big. Events and festivals such as the Taste of Vail, the Keystone Wine and Jazz Festival, the Lake Tahoe Food Autumn Food and Wine Festival and the Aspen Food and Wine Classic are not only outrageously fun events to be a part of, but all bring in world-class wines and winemakers.

Sign up for three days and focus on a particular region or grape, and at the end of a weekend, you may not be a certified expert, but you will certainly have had fun learning.

The wine seminars at these mega-events can be revelatory. Great glassware, educated and trained presenters and the opportunity to taste different wines from different vintages, or regions, is something you usually can’t do in the real world.

Then there are more focused classes and tastings that can often be found in resort areas, at restaurants, cooking schools or community colleges.

For example, the Cooking School of Aspen has a weekly wine-tasting event that explores, say, the wines of South America, one week and the wines of the Loire the next. Check out your local papers, or ask the sommeliers at the restaurants you go to or the folks in your favorite wine shop for suggestions. They’re typically on the pulse beat.

WORDS ON WINE

But if you can’t get to a seminar, the next best alternative for opening up the world of wine is to turn a page. That would be the pages of wine books. Fortunately, the world of wine has a long history, dating to ancient Greece, of writers pontificating on wine.

And there are some outstanding books that can provide a plethora of information. Begin with Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson’s “The World Atlas of Wine.”

This is, as the title infers, a book that documents all the wine from all around the world. Open a bottle, pour a glass and turn to the page that details where your wine is from, and you will be enlightened. Simple as that.

Then there is Karen MacNeil’s “The Wine Bible,” which has 994 pages of insights and recommendations from one of wine’s grand apostles. Or even try the best-selling wine book of all time, “Wine For Dummies.”

You need not only restrict yourself to guides and tomes of information. There are dozens of books that capture the romance of wine in all of its forms.

One of my favorites is Jay McInerney’s collection of essays “Bacchus and Me,” which gives his take on his own wine education. If Anthony Bourdain was a better writer and focused exclusively on wine, this would be the book he would write.

THE DIGITAL DOMAIN

Of course, we live in a digital age, and fortunately, the words on wine have spilled onto the web. Perhaps the easiest way to quickly learn about a wine in your glass is to go to winefolly.com and enter the varietal. You’ll get the lowdown, as well as recommendations for similar wines and other grapes you might want to try.

For a blog that provides a little deeper info and a dollop of opinion — okay, a heavy dose of opinion — you can’t go wrong with Alder Yarrow’s Vinography. Since 2004, Yarrow has been dishing out readable posts about wine, and if he recommends you try a wine, it is worth the effort to find it.

The bottom line is, there are lots of ways to learn more about the wines in your glass. If you know what you like, that is a start, but there may be more out there to love.

Kelly J. Hayes lives in the soon-to-be-designated appellation of Old Snowmass, Colo. He can be reached at malibukj@aol.com.