I've posted later on down the thread, but I thought I might demystify some of this because it isn't as complicated as people tend to think. I'm not a great wine taster by any stretch of the imagination, but I understand the basics.
If your goal is to identify a particular wine, it's always going to be an educated guess. You'll be wrong a lot, but you can also be right a fair number of times. Generall, red wine is dramatically easier than white wine -- as you will understand later.
It's important to understand that the visual aspect of the wine is incredibly important, so it's not just the taste that helps you. First you need to figure out the varietal (or blend). If the wine is well known, then the varietal (along with a couple of other factors) will tell you where the wine is from: because in traditional wine growing countries, the varietals you are allowed to use are governed by the "appellation". For example, if you are going to make a "Burgundy" in the "Burgundy" region, you must use pinot noir. You have no other choice. If you choose to make a different variety, then you are spending millions on the land and making 1/10th the amount of money because you can't use the "Burgundy" name.
So, right from the get go, it seems like a bit of a cheat. Again, though, this is part of the game. Your host gives you a famous wine that you have a chance of identifying. If your host tries to deceive you (by intentionally picking
a wine that has a surprising profile, for instance), they will succeed. A good example of this might be to find a particularly good pinot noir from the US and watch as the expert mistakenly identifies it as a Burgundy. Sometimes that's fun and helps people remember that, yes, less famous regions make good wine too.
Anyway, different varietals have different colours and different smells and different mouth feels. Sometimes you can tell the varietal just by looking at it. Merlot is often down right purple, for example. Same with taste. For me young cabernet sauvignon has a flavour of leather. No other grape I've ever tasted has that flavour. Different grapes have different amounts of tannins and it's relatively easy to tell them apart.
It's not just the variety, but also to the wine making parameters. Most famous regions also specify how the wine is made. So if you figure out the varietal, you can then tell the difference between the regions just by how much oak flavour there is, etc.
Once you've figured out the variety and have an idea about the region, you need to look at the colour again. Wine oxidises over time. Natural corks allow a certain amount of air in the bottle. Even plastic corks have been developed to allow air into the bottle. Over time the wine turns brown. At the same time alcohol oxidises into esters, which usually have ripe fruit smells and flavours.
This will give you an idea of the age. Wine is interesting because high quality producers pride themselves on producing a variable product -- they make no attempt to homogenise their flavour profile from year to year (as opposed to low quality producers, which spend a lot of effort doing that). If the weather is hot and dry, then the wine will be dark, heavy and tannic. If the weather is cool and rainy, then the wine will be light in colour and the flavour correspondingly light.
Once you know the varietal, and have a guess on the region and age, it's a matter of knowing what the weather was like in each region. You search until you find a region/variety/year that is likely to match the wine. Again, I have to stress that if your host is intentionally trying to throw you a curve ball, they will almost certainly succeed in confusing you. It's not difficult to find a wine that tastes like it might be from a region at a specific time, but isn't.
Finally, there are some famous years in particular regions where the weather was awful, but that a handful of producers happened to escape the weather. In that case, if you have a nice example of a wine and you feel confident about the age, you might be able to identify the exact producer. There are other events like that, where an expert will be able to identify a producer. Again, it's really important to understand that this requires you to be super lucky, or more likely that your host is deliberately handing you the answer on a silver plate. They expect you to figure it out, and it's lots of fun for everyone if you do.
So that's it. Tasting food and drink is fun. Playing trivia games is fun. Playing trivia games in the form of tasting food and drink is fun. Don't try to find more than that, because there isn't any more. IMHO, anyway...