Fill it up

The wine world can be a scary place. All that gurgling and spitting and those snooty descriptions about being ‘‘redolent’’ and ‘‘reminiscent’’ of such things as oak, banana, and marigolds. And you thought it just tasted like wine. But, really, wine appreciation is simply that, finding wines you enjoy. Whether a seasoned wine buff or oenophilically challenged, wine festivals offer a fun opportunity to expand your knowledge of the vast, virtually bottomless well of wine-making.

Winter Wine Festival

‘‘That’s what’s so exciting to me,’’ says Michele Duval, the wine director at the Wentworth by the Sea, a historic resort hotel near Portsmouth, N.H. ‘‘There is no end,’’ she says of wine-making’s endless possibilities.

Three years ago, Duval started the hotel’s Winter Wine Festival, which kicks off Saturday with its Grand Tasting and runs through Feb. 24. Events are held in the intimate Wentworth dining room — its pretty domed ceiling painted with cherubs — and also in the waterside Latitudes restaurant. For the duration of the festival, there’ll be Sunday bubbly brunches and nightly weekday fireside Flight Nights in the Roosevelt Lounge, featuring wines paired with hors d’oeuvres and live jazz.

Two weeks before the event, with some dinners already sold out (reservations are highly recommended), Duval was still choosing the wines for a couple of the final dinners. Yet she started her selections last May.

‘‘I’m careful in picking a good mix for the festival,’’ Duval says. ‘‘I don’t want too many in the same style or from the same region.’’

The first step is choosing the wine makers. Then she sifts though hundreds of wine samples before selecting, usually, five wines per dinner and assembling the wine flights. Finally, she sits down with chef Daniel Dumont to create the dinners.

Duval is particularly excited about the Casa LaPostolle Grand Vintner’s dinner on Jan. 19.

‘‘When I tasted the wines, I thought, ‘Oh, my, this shows such terroir.’ It’s the soil and the mountains. But it shows such finesse in the wine-making,’’ raves Duval. Then, on Feb. 9, it’s the First Families of Sonoma Grand Vintner’s dinner, featuring some of California’s oldest wine makers: the Pedroncelli, Sebastiani, Seghesio, and Foppiano wineries.

‘‘This is family-owned wineries from the gold-rush days,’’ says Duval. ‘‘I am so excited I got them all to be here. I could faint right now thinking about it!’’

Boston Wine Festival

Like Duval, Boston Harbor Hotel’s executive chef, Daniel Bruce, is a wine enthusiast with vast knowledge, stemming from heading the nation’s longest-running wine festival. The Boston Wine Festival, held at the hotel, is 18 years old this winter. Tomorrow’s lavishly catered Grand Tasting in the Wharf Room launches the festival, which runs through April. and keeps Bruce busy.

‘‘No skiing holidays for me,’’ he jokes. As soon as one festival ends, he begins preparations for the next, talking with the world’s top wine producers and sifting through samples, finally choosing and pairing with food to enhance the qualities of the wine: ‘‘It’s all about honoring the wine,’’ Bruce says.

Some dinners, such as Meritage Madness (Jan. 31, Feb. 1-2) and Super Tuscans (Feb. 5), are BWF traditions. ‘‘Meritage Madness is always fun. That’s the Californian tradition of fashioning wines in the Bordeaux style,’’ he explains.

Bruce is particularly excited about the new event Foraging With Wine (April 3), which will focus on the burgeoning organic and biodynamic (organic viniculture that also uses cosmic energy cycles) wines. ‘‘There are so many benefits to producing wine this way,’’ he says. ‘‘One of which is less sulfites, which has to be better.’’

Sun WineFest

The Sun WineFest at Mohegan Sun is just four years old and provides a short but sweet weekend of wine and food Jan. 19-20.

‘‘It’s a learning process,’’ says Joe Vita, Mohegan Sun’s beverage director. ‘‘This is my 15th year in the beverage business. There’s an amazing amount to know. I’ll sit in on a seminar or do a tasting and find out more.’’

The real action happens Jan. 19, with the daylong grand tasting in the main Uncas Ballroom, which features multiple seminars and cooking demonstrations. Later that night, the ‘‘Celebrity Chef Dine Around’’ session starts at 8, featuring chefs from New York, New England, and Canada, including Aaron Sanchez, owner of Centrico in Tribeca; Luis Bollo of Ibiza in New Haven, Conn.; and Boston stalwarts Todd English and Jasper White.

‘‘I always tell people, forget January 1st, make your resolutions February 1st,’’ says Vita. Sunday, there’s another Grand Tasting, which is usually a mellower scene.

One wine highlight this year is a seminar by Walter Schug, who worked with Julio Gallo, Joseph Phelps, and created California’s first Meritage wine, Insignia.

‘‘I found his wines about three years ago and fell in love with them. This is the first time he’s come for the wine fest,’’ enthuses Vita.

Another festival first is the addition of a beer garden. It will feature brews from Mohegan Sun’s own microbrewery, Belgian ales, and so-called Extreme Craft Brewers, such as Dogfish, whose highly potent 90-minute IPA is, well, quite a head turner.

Boston Wine Expo

The 16th annual Boston Wine Expo, which takes place at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center Feb. 10-11, has its unofficial launch Feb. 9, with the 22d Spinazzola Festival of Food and Wine, a charity gala.

The Wine Expo itself has oodles of seminars and events, including an exclusive Grand Cru wine lounge for a more intimate ambience and exclusive wine selection, and a new section for organic and biodynamic wine makers. There will be celebrity chef demonstrations, including Todd English teamed with Ted Allen, wine connoisseur for ‘‘Queer Eye,’’ who will be acting as representative for Robert Mondavi Private Selection wines.

For the past 11 years, event director Ed Hurley has orchestrated the Boston Wine Expo, the country’s largest trade and consumer wine event. The Grand Tasting showcases more than 440 international and domestic wineries from 13 countries, with samples of more than 1,800 different wines. But thankfully, he says, he doesn’t have to try every single wine, and he doesn’t advise that anyone attempt to.

‘‘To get the most out of the Wine Expo, study the program, take a good look at what’s there, and choose just a few wines that you are interested in, and then get to know them,’’ advises Hurley.

And all that spitting? Is it really necessary?

‘‘Well,’’ says Hurley with a chuckle, ‘‘that is the way we advise people to taste wine. It’s just the proper way to do it.’’