'It has a beautiful nose'
Aroma draws you to wine
As you lift your glass of wine, it's the aroma (or bouquet) that you should first notice.
Wine experts speak of the aroma of a wine as people might talk about a lover: Seductive, sexy, or earthy.
According to wine writer Lettie Teague you can understand every quality of a wine with you nose, except for the five aspects you can find only with your tongue: salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. Umami literally means deliciousness in Japanese.
The late enologist and professor at the University of Bordeaux, Emile Peynaud, claimed in his book The Taste of Wine, that a wine drinker's sense of smell may be thousands of times more sensitive than his sense of taste.
According to Peynaud, wine aromas can be organized into 10 types: animal (meaty); pine, wood, chemical, spice, smoky and roasted, floral, fruity and vegetal. Wine can also have tones of estery, or byproducts of fermentation.
Young wines generally have a fruity aroma but, as they age, their smell becomes what is called a 'bouquet.' That older smell becomes more refined and has other tones of minerals, earth and wood.
Wine writer Jancis Robinson gives some good examples of aromas:
Syrah, spicy and licorice.
Wood-aged red wine, leather.
Riesling, floral
Cabernet, green pepper, currant sometimes asparagus
Chardonnay (young), apple
Chablis, wet stones
Piedmont reds, Molasses
Shiraz, chocolate.
Pinot Noir (young), raspberry
