(WSJ) - Much can be gleaned from a glance at a wine, including its age, texture, alcohol level and sometimes grape varietal. You’ll never look at a glass of wine the same way

IN THE 2006 MOVIE “Local Color,” a great but long-forgotten painter reviews the work of his young protégé and derides the clouds he has painted. “Clouds are not so white,” he says, comparing the student’s efforts to “flying rocks.” The painter bids him to look at the sky anew. The boy dutifully gazes upward and this time sees that clouds are not just white but all shades of pink and yellow and purple. A similar revelation can take place when an oenophile truly examines a glass of wine.

There is much to learn about a wine from its appearance, even beyond its color, and yet most drinkers—including myself—regularly skip over this aspect. It’s one of the rare instances when looks seem to count for very little. I can’t remember the last time I discussed the way a wine looked, as opposed to the way it tasted or smelled, with my oenophile friends.

The information that can be gleaned from a mere glance includes a wine’s age, texture, alcohol level and possibly even grape variety. As the late, great Bordeaux enologist Professor Émile Peynaud noted in his seminal work, “The Taste of Wine,” a wine’s appearance is every bit as important as its taste and smell: “The winetaster’s eye must be able to interpret the slightest visual clue and it should be as carefully critical of appearance as his nose of odors,” he wrote in a chapter devoted to the visual aspect of wine.

The most basic fact about a wine is, of course, its color: red, white or rosé. But a red wine isn’t just red. It can be crimson, ruby, garnet or cherry. Sometimes it’s even a bit brown or orange. A white wine is never truly white. It may be almost colorless, gold, slightly green or yellow. Rosé wine comes in a great range of color, from pale rose to salmon, peach, even vivid pink.

Rosé is the only wine whose color I’ve heard being much discussed. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what constitutes the proper shade. Drinkers will debate this in a way that few dispute the “right” color of a white or red. “Nothing bright pink,” declares my friend Sue, a designer, who is certain that a wine of this color is likely to be commercial and cheap. Like many, she prefers a pale salmon color.

Aside from debating the perceived superiority of pale salmon rosés (often called Provençal, although many such wines are made far from France), most wine drinkers struggle to put into words what they see in their glass. According to Laura Maniec, master sommelier, wine educator and owner of Corkbuzz Restaurant and Wine Bars, “A lot of people don’t know how to communicate” much about a wine’s appearance. This is particularly true of men, Ms. Maniec added. When it comes to classifying wine color, they are more reluctant than women to specify a particular shade, i.e., ruby or garnet. I wonder if that’s because women have more experience with nuanced color names, as a trip to a cosmetic counter will prove. I have four shades of red lipstick that have four different names.