Do dusty cherries, licorice, rose petals and sandalwood with a hint of tar sound intriguing?
Following last edition’s focus on palate and tasting assessment, we’ll now focus on bouquet. For those that may not be familiar with the descriptors above, it is a classic description of the great Italian wines of Barbaresco and Barolo made from the nebbiolo grape.
While we can only taste sweet, sour, salt and bitter in wine, our olfactory sense tricks our minds into thinking that we are tasting more than that. It can be confusing to retrain your palate with this in mind, but it can also enhance your experience by isolating a wine’s bouquet from its taste.
People often say they can’t taste the nuances wine professionals use to describe wines. It’s important to distinguish the difference between the smell and taste of wine. A wine’s bouquet is half the pleasure and experience of wine, with the other being the warm, fuzzy sensation that comes from sipping it.
Each grape variety has its own set of descriptors that define the wine and where it comes from. For example, if you where to hear someone say a wine reminds them of grapefruit, it’s clear that this is a classic New Zealand sauvignon blanc. A wine with deep notes of plum, cassis and cigar box is almost certainly from Bordeaux, France.
The bouquet is where wine becomes fascinating. Smelling a wine with a focus can tell you all about the varietal and where it comes from. The question is: how?
The best way to train your sense of smell is to smell everything. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? The next time you are making dinner, smell each spice you are using and put it to memory. Black pepper, herbs de provence, allspice, clove, dill, vanilla and so on. Or perhaps the next time you are cutting fruit. Take note of the difference between lemon peel and the lemon fruit inside. Red apple versus green apple. Green apple versus pear. Alfalfa sprouts versus asparagus or jalapeño peppers. Plum versus blackberry and so on.
Smelling everything in your kitchen will radically alter the way you smell wine and further enhance your enjoyment of it. Be sure to swirl your wine in the glass before taking in the bouquet, as this will help the aromatics jump out of the glass and into your olfactory nerve.
On a humorous note, master sommelier Ian Cauble in the documentary “Somm” described a wine’s bouquet with notes of a fresh-cut garden hose. While his colleagues in the film had a laugh and questioned that descriptor, it was a clear indicator for Cauble as to the wine being a California sauvingon blanc.
As silly as it may seem, his sense of smell and what he associates certain wines as displaying are a clear example of the intrigue involved in smelling the world around you – even if it requires you to smell a freshly cut garden hose.
Alan Cuenca is an accredited oenophile and owner of Put a Cork in It, a Durango wine store. Reach him at info@putacorkinit.org.
