Learning to taste a wine appeals to you ? Easy with Beaux-Vins … Now that you have observed your wine, you are ready to feel it.
You recently had the opportunity to read the article on " Tasting : how to watch wine ? "And I congratulate you if you have already taken the reflex to observe the wine, to take pleasure in admiring all the subtleties of wine colors. Now, it is time to certainly move on to the most interesting stage of tasting - and it's not about drinking — : smell the wine.
This is the stage where you can let your imagination run wild. The more wine you taste the more you will develop your nose. But the training of your nose doesn't stop there, get in the habit of smelling and tasting everything around you : Fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices, terre, pollution, in short everything that passes under your nose - I tested for you to taste earth and pebbles, it's not great… therefore to avoid —. By doing this, you can put words on the aromas of the wine in your glass.
You can quickly get the impression that this step is superhuman, but that's only because we never really get the chance to train our noses to recognize smells. At birth, olfactory sensitivity is very strong and decreases with age if we do not use it enough. I often hear "I'm a smoker, I'm never going to get there ”. This sentence is simply wrong, you will simply take longer than others to discover the smells.
The mechanism of olfaction
To start well, it is interesting to know the mechanism of smell, because it intervenes at two levels. You can use a glass of syrup to understand how we smell and feel the aromas.
Olfaction is the most obvious step. You bring the glass to your nose and smell it to perceive the smells - obvious no ? —
The retro-olfaction is the least obvious part and yet it is very easy to verify. It is also the passage between the palate and the nasal passages that allows you to smell the aromas. Pinch your nose and take a sip of syrup in your mouth. You will perceive the flavors - bitterness, sweet, salty, acidity, and umami —, but no aroma. By letting go of your nose and inhaling, you will then perceive the aromas. The odorous molecules pass through the retro-nasal passage and the olfactory bulb.
The difference between aromas and bouquet
The scents of wine evolve with the wine, from birth to old age through aging in oak barrels. There are therefore two types of scents :
The aromas
There are the primary aromas, from grape variety or terroir, and secondary aromas, from fermentation. If you want to learn more about where the aromas come from, the differences between each, I suggest you read or reread the article " The origin of wine aromas ".
The bouquet
The bouquet develops during the aging of the wine in vats or barrels and while it is being kept in the bottle.
Aging softens the fruity notes and makes them more complex. Wine, put in vat, will tend to stay young and fruity. In oak barrels, the wine will undergo a slow oxidation which will transmit odorous compounds. According to the barrel and the winegrower's know-how, the woodiness of the wine will be more or less harmonious.
Once bottled, the wine protected from the effect of oxygen will enter a reduction phase. Leather aromas, of meat, game, mushroom, or smoke will develop. Aging will especially benefit the marriage of aromas to make them more harmonious. We talked about it, excessive reduction of wine is a fault that can ruin your life. To recognize its smell and erase this inconvenience, you can read " Flaws in wine: reduction ".
How to smell wine ?
After scrutinizing your glass of wine, the appreciation of the nose of the wine takes place in 3 steps :
The 1st nose where it all begins
Smell the wine directly without swirling it in your glass.
Thanks to this first nose, you will try to assess the intensity of the aromas ? Are they very intense, medium or low ? It is also an opportunity to judge if the wine is clean or if it has defects. This first nose allows you to discover the most volatile aromas that come from the grape varieties., terroir, how the wine is made and how it is aged and kept.
The 2nd nose or the discovery of aromas
Smell the wine after swirling it in your glass.
Stirring your glass, you will oxygenate the wine, which will intensify certain aromas and reveal new ones. The question to ask yourself during this step : what do you feel in your glass ?
Using the aroma wheel, focus primarily on the main flavor families. Is your wine more fruity or floral ? Maybe mineral ?
The first times, you will certainly have a hard time finding an answer to this question - This is completely normal —. Print the Wheel of Aromas that I put at the bottom of the article to help you. Starting from the center of the wheel, and like our two friends Dupont and Dupond go into more and more detail. By dint of training, you will find more and more easily what you smell and will be able to discover several of them in the same wine.
Some grape varieties can be identified by their primary aromas. The Gewurztraminer is recognizable thanks to its aromas of lychee, or Pinot Noir with its aromas of cherry, blackcurrant and pepper. Knowing how to recognize these aromas, it is also knowing how to recognize the grape variety, therefore potentially the region and therefore amaze everyone.
Some aromas - highlighted in the wheel - inform you about the evolution of wine. The aromas linked to the evolution of wine are called tertiary aromas — we will talk about it soon —. The aromas of flowers, fruits or plants will give way to aromas of cooked or ripe fruit, mushroom, undergrowth, game or leather.
The 3rd nose or the evaluation of the aging of a wine
A wine base remains in your glass.
This step is done after the taste analysis of the wine, when there is a little wine left in your glass - a few hours after opening the bottle —. After this oxygenation time, the wine was able to breathe and then releases more subtle aromas. Primary and secondary aromas, as well as the tannins are transformed as after having aged. This is how you can measure the effect of time on wine. The most complex and noble aromas will reveal themselves.
Synthesis
The first nose — without swirling the wine in your glass - allows you to check if the wine is clean or if it has defects, but also to assess the intensity of the aromas of your wine.
The second nose — after swirling the wine in your glass - allows you to find the aromas of the wine thanks to your imagination and the aroma wheel. These aromas can tell you about the age of your wine. If your wine has mushroom aromas, you can safely say that this wine is fully evolved.
The third nose — a wine base after an hour - allows you to get an idea of what the wine could become.
Conclusion
It is always funny to note that the aromas of wine at rest, after stirring, and after oxidation are significantly different and gain in complexity. All noses can perceive this evolution, from the most beginners to the most trained ! You should also know that the olfactory memory is working and you can develop yours by practicing identifying the aromas released by the wines you drink.. Trust yourself and remember that you can smell different aromas than your neighbor. You can remember about 10’000 smells, so it is time to train !
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- Tasting : what to watch in a wine ?
- Tasting : how to taste a wine ?
- Tasting : how to conclude a wine tasting ?
- Learn to taste wine in minutes
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