I'm Trying But I Still Don't Get It!!

[cheeps]

I'm very new to wine (been drinking it occasionally for years, but never knew anything about it other than it was red or white) and am starting to take notes, read as much as I can, try different wines, etc. to really try to learn a bit more.

I plan on attending my first wine tasting after work on Wednesday and maybe I'll learn more there, but as of now, as much as I try, when I smell the wine I only smell "wine". I'm getting a bit better at tasting, but no where near what I want to be. I read all the descriptions of what a wine "should" smell/taste like, cherries, pears, leather, cigars, oak, hay, earth, etc., but I can't seem to distinguish many of these individual flavors. I do taste things, but I have no idea what it is I'm tasting - how to describe it.

I have really only gotten a particular smell or taste twice so far. Once drinking a sauvignon blanc, about half-way thru the glass, sniffing and concentrating on all the flavors I was SUPPOSED to be getting I got a flash of Aha! Asparagus!! Then while drinking a Pinot Noir again, about half-way thru the glass (I think it was too cold when I started the glass so half-way thru it had warmed up to what it should have been to begin with) I sniffed again and got such a rich wave of baked cherries - almost like inhaling a jar of cherry jam. I thought I smelled some leather also, but I'm not positive.

What I'm wondering is if I'm smelling or tasting these things, because I'm reading that's what they're supposed to smell like or taste like - was the idea planted there or did I really taste/smell it? And how do you "learn" to distinguish these smells/tastes. Is it just experience? Should I not be sitting there with a list of what a particular wine is supposed to smell/taste like while I'm drinking it? Should I just do it "blind" and try and figure it out for myself? As I said, right now I mostly get "wine" when I'm trying to figure out a taste/smell.

I hope I'm getting across what I mean - I have a tendancy to babble! Sorry! Thanks for any tips you can give me!

Lisa