On a recent Saturday at the BARGETTO tasting room on Cannery Row in Monterey, I had the pleasure to serve a couple whose questions left a memorable impression. After a lengthy glance at the tasting menu, the gentleman looked up and asked, “What does it mean when it says a wine has hints of tobacco?” The lady quickly followed, “Jasmine? Black Pepper? We’re just getting into wine, and frankly, I don’t taste or smell most of the things I see used to describe it.”
Wine Counselor, Joe Crivello assists wine tasters at BARGETTO’S Cannery Row tasting room
They certainly had a legitimate point. The language of wine can be daunting at first glance. The terminology that is often used to describe the nuances of a wine’s characteristics is hardly intuitive to most of us. Have you ever read a wine list at a restaurant or the back of a wine label and felt like you reading a secret code?
Between bouquet and buttery, hints of coffee and black cherry, it can be quite challenging to discern what we may or may not like. I nodded in agreement and explained that those notes are a guide, or a “jumping off point” to help describe your own sensory experience.
Making Common Scent-ses
Think about your senses. Smell and touch are two of which we hardly use with the same frequency as our sight, touch and hearing. When it comes to wine, however, the senses of smell and taste become essential to the experience, especially as vintages age and mature. Since no two people taste and smell alike, however, the challenge of defining a clear set of rules for how wines should be described arises. Those within the industry do use vocabulary that has been generally accepted, but for those of us who are beginning to learn about wine (and those who enjoy it frequently but still have trouble understanding the lingo), elaborate descriptions, such as inedible things that are applied to wine, can be a roadblock for figuring out our likes and dislikes.
Technically Wine Speaking…
According to WineLoversPage.com, “The scents of wine come from several sources. The fruity smell of young wines comes directly from the grapes, with woody and other organic aromas added if the wine was aged in oak. Fine, aged wines add the most complex (and sometimes un-winelike) scents, which some tasters call ‘bouquet’.” The chemical reactions that take place in the gradual aging process are the cause for this. Spoilage is clear when unpleasant changes occur in color and odor as wine ages. A good rule of thumb to remember is the younger the wine, the more straightforward and present the smell of grapes and fruit is.
Certain popular varietals are also known to have their own trademark aromas. Merlot and Cabernet often are reminiscent of wood and pine needles, cherry and currants and are sometimes referred to as herbaceous with hints of bell pepper or green olives. Syrah can smell of ground black pepper and spice, while Chardonnay may signal crisp apples and/or butter and tropical fruit.
French oenologist and researcher Emile Peynaud, known internationally for his revolutionary contribution to modern winemaking, dedicated an entire book to the taste of wine, for which it is aptly named The Taste of Wine. In the text he categorized wine aromas into 9 general groups of which a breadth of terms include such odors as game (venison and beef), spice, and floral nuances.
These include
- Animal Odors: smells of game, beef, venison
- Balsamic Odors: smells of pine trees, resin, vanilla
- Woody Odors: smells of new wood of oak barrels
- Chemical Odors: smells of acetone, yeasts, lactic and fermentation odors
- Spicy Odors: smells of pepper, cloves, cinnamon, etc.
- Empyreumatic Odors: smells of smoke, leather, coffee
- Floral Odors: smells of flowers, violets, roses, jasmine
- Fruity Odors: smells of blackcurrants, raspberries, cherries
- Vegetal Odors: smells of herbs, tea, mushrooms, veggies
Demystifying the Language
In the eighties, a professor and sensory/flavor chemist at UC Davis in California, Dr. Ann Nobel, developed the "Aroma Wheel," a tool for all levels of wine enthusiasts to use in describing scents and flavors in wine. Nobel and her colleagues collected from a large sampling of industry professionals and wine enthusiasts a list of the most common wine-related terms and refined them to be as impartial and least subjective as possible. They organized these terms from general to specific in a color coded, 3-tier structure. The result provides a visual representation of wine vocabulary that is simple to search for words that can describe what you taste.
Dr Ann Nobel's Aroma Wheel
Training our brains and noses to associate what we are familiar with to wine-related odors is the key to building our own personalized wine vocabulary. Tasting rooms are a great place to further experiment with your palate. Both of the BARGETTO tasting rooms, for example, have not only created detailed tasting menus to support your tasting experience, but have trained, friendly staff that are happy to help facilitate understanding the wines’ aromas and flavors. You don't have to be an expert; all it takes is practice.
Try an experiment with your next wine tasting or club release. Pour a glass, and try to point out what you smell or taste. Make note of the flavors you associate with this varietal. Really get your nose into the nose of the wine.
If you practice this more often, you’ll begin to find that you’re able to taste and smell the differences among wines more easily as your awareness heightens. You’ll notice that patterns will come apparent with time, and that gives you all the more reason to try more different wines.
