wine aromas | The Rambling Epicure

The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Wine Tasting in a Nutshell

Published by James Flewellen + Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Permalink 0

Over the last few posts I’ve covered various aspects of wine tasting in some detail. We’ve looked at the appearance of wine, the aromas we find in white and red wines, the structure of the wine on the palate and how to begin to assess the quality of the wine. This post summarises these ideas in a concise ‘checklist’, which I hope you find a useful prompt as you explore new tastes and new wines.

Step 1: Appearance

What is the colour of the wine? Can you see through it? Tilt the glass and examine the wine against a white background. Is there a change in colour, or ‘gradient’ along the wine?

Step 2: Nose

Tempranillo varietal wine bottle and glass, showing colour

The nose is the aroma of the wine. Is it powerful or subtle? Complex or easy to describe? Does the aroma change after swirling the wine? Does it evolve over time as the wine aerates or warms up? What can you smell? Is the wine primarily a fruity wine? What sort of fruits, and are they fresh, cooked or dried? Perhaps there are also other aromas: spices, grassy notes, herbs, wood, nuts, savoury/meaty aromas? Do any of these aromas remind you of other wines you’ve had before, or maybe indicate some age on the wine?

Step 3: Palate

We look for up to eight components of a wine when we taste. Firstly, the flavours: are these the same as the aromas you can smell? All wines have perceptible acidity and alcohol, which give structure to the wine. Alcohol is a major component of the body of a wine, which is how heavy or viscous the wine feels in the mouth. Red wines also have tannins, which provide additional structure. Some wines have perceptible residual sugar. The evidence of maturation in oak may also be present in many white and red styles. Finally, the finish is how long the flavours and sensations of the wine linger in your mouth after swallowing.

Step 4: The Conclusion

Wine tasting is a very personal thing. No-one else can tell you whether you like or dislike a particular wine, or why you do. That said, there are certain features a professional wine taster looks for in assessing the quality of a wine (whether it suits their personal tastes or not). These include:

Balance: is the overall perception of the wine flavours and structure in harmony?
Length: do the flavours persist for a long time or do they fall flat and short?
Intensity: are the flavours and aromas intense or a bit weak? Perhaps they are too intense and overwhelming.
Complexity: is there a lot going on in the wine, or is it a bit simple and ‘one-dimensional’.

Other things to think about are: When would you drink this wine – by itself or would it be better with food? What sort of food? Is it good value for money? Is it ready to drink now? Or perhaps it will be better in a few years. It might seem like a lot to take in but ultimately enjoying wine comes down to two things: Do you like this wine? and more importantly: Why is that?

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James Flewellen is The Rambling Epicure wine columnist. James is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford. Originally from New Zealand, the huge range of wine James discovered in Europe spurred his interest in all things vinous. He became involved in the University’s Blind Wine Tasting Society and has recently completed a two-year term as its President. During this time he represented the University in a number of domestic and international wine tasting competitions, winning several awards. He is currently completing the WSET Diploma in Wine and Spirits. James has a passion for wine communication and education and runs the Oxford Wine Blog and the Oxford Wine Academy.

The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Using your nose: Aromas in red wines

Published by James Flewellen + Friday, August 31, 2012 Permalink 0

by James Flewellen

Like white wines, the aromas of reds can similarly be broken up into ‘fruity’ and ‘non-fruity’ categories. Rather than a fruit ‘spectrum’, however, I tend to think of red wines in terms of red fruit and black fruit. Some of the lighter, more ethereal red wines have notes of redcurrant, cranberry, raspberry and strawberry, while in fuller-bodied wines you’ll often find luscious blackcurrant, blackberry and damson. Some wines, notably Pinot Noir can straddle the red fruit-black fruit divide, while I often find cherry and red plum notes specifically in Italian varietals.

I mentioned that with white wines, the position of the wine’s aroma profile along a ‘spectrum’ can indicate the ripeness of the fruit, and thus the climate in which the vine has grown. There is an analogue with red wines, where wine from cooler climes may smell (and taste) more of tart, fresher fruit while wine from wamer places will have notes of ripe, jammy or even baked fruit. Think of the subtle notes of fresh raspberries versus the heady aroma of a pot of homemade raspberry jam on the boil. Grapes from very hot places can have yield wines with dried fruit notes such as raisin, prune or date.

Some fruit aromas found in red wine

It’s perhaps worth mentioning here, that other than flavouring added by maturation in oak barrels, the flavours and aromas in wine come entirely from the fermentation of grapes. Grapes are not so far removed from other fruits on the evolutionary tree that it should come as no surprise that we might find some of the same chemicals in grapes as we do in apples, cherries or blackberries. Over millennia humans have domesticated the vine and carried out a series of genetic selections to bring forward different characteristics in what we now term different ‘varieties’ of the vine.

On the whole, red wines are more suited to oak ageing than whites. Thus we’ll often get the characteristic vanilla or coconut notes from wines that have seen, respectively, new French or American oak. More red wines will be aged in what is termed ‘old oak’ or ‘second use’ barrels. These are barrels that have already been used for one vintage and have thus imparted most of their bright, toast and vanilla aromas to a previous wine. Their effect on a subsequent wine is thus more subtle, and in such wines you’ll often find aromas of nuts — hazelnuts and walnuts are the two I find more commonly — and also coffee, mocha and chocolate.

Image Copyright James Flewellen. All Rights Reserved.

French oak barrels used for maturing red wine in Bordeaux.

Red wines too have a broad spectrum of non-fruit aromas. Wine writers and critics have come up with all sorts of interesting descriptors to attempt to communicate these sensations to their readers, and although they may sound rather rude, they are in fact (usually) complimentary. Some that spring to mind are farmyard, wet wool, horse manure, charcoal, ash and earth.

Spices too are a rich vein to tap for red wine aroma descriptions. Licorice, anise, Chinese five-star, pepper – both white and freshly ground black, juniper, cloves, nutmeg to name a few.

Some red wines have a herbaceous aspect to their aroma profile. Cabernet Sauvignon from a relatively cool climate famously has a note of ‘green bell pepper’. Cabernet Franc can smell grassy and leafy while Pinot Noir can bring forth hints of mushroom or autumnal leaves. Others still have floral aromas.

The most interesting wines will smell of many things; the aroma will swirl, morph and change over time in the glass; with bottle age, even more aromas come to the fore while other recede into the background. And of course different people will notice different things in the same glass of wine. Smell is a very powerful trigger for memory — which perhaps explains some of the more poetic descriptions for wine aromas. The great thing is that there are no wrong answers — nobody else has your olfactory sense nor your memories top draw upon. What can be frustrating to begin with is not to have the right vocabulary for describing what you smell. The best way to solve this is to buy some fruit, or some flowers, or some spices and just smell them! It might seem a bit mad but surely, not to notice what your wine smells like is to miss out on at least half the fun!

__________________

James Flewellen is The Rambling Epicure wine columnist. James is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford. Originally from New Zealand, the huge range of wine James discovered in Europe spurred his interest in all things vinous. He became involved in the University’s Blind Wine Tasting Society and has recently completed a two-year term as its President. During this time he represented the University in a number of domestic and international wine tasting competitions, winning several awards. He is currently completing the WSET Diploma in Wine and Spirits. James has a passion for wine communication and education and runs the Oxford Wine Blog and the Oxford Wine Academy.

The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Using your nose: Aromas in white wines

Published by James Flewellen + Monday, August 27, 2012 Permalink 0

by James Flewellen

For me, the greatest tragedy of having a cold is not hours spent in bed when I could be out doing something ‘productive’. Rather, it’s losing my sense of smell with a blocked nose: food simply doesn’t taste the same!

Just like food, the aroma of a wine is very important to our overall perception, and enjoyment, of it. We smell a wine without even trying when we go to drink it. Our taste buds are immediately informed about what to expect and we unconsciously assess the flavour of a wine based on whether it lives up to how it smelled. We even have smell sensors that can be reached from inside our mouth. These are especially triggered by wine, whose alcoholic content helps lift the aroma molecules to reach these sensors even after we swallow. Wine can be such a complex beverage, it’s a shame not to experience fully everything it has to offer, which is why you’ll see wine geeks swirling a glass of fine wine and sticking their noses in endlessly, before even taking a sip!

When pairing food and wine think also about complimenting the aromas of each. The stone fruit and honey aromas of this Tokaji paired very well with an apricot tarte tatin.

Given the density of aroma molecules found in a wine and a human’s comparatively poor sense of smell, it can sometimes be a challenge identifying what it is we’re actually smelling in a wine. This is no bad thing — if you can immediately name a single thing a wine smells like, it’s a sign that it’s not particularly complex or interesting wine.

To help simplify things I like to break up the aromas I might be getting in a wine into different categories. Firstly I focus on the ‘fruit’ aspect of the bouquet. Does the wine smell ‘fruity’ or is the nose (wine term for ‘aroma’) dominated by non-fruit aromas? Or perhaps they are both there in equal measure. If fruity, what sort of fruits?

For white wines, I tend to think of a ‘fruit spectrum’. At one end of the scale we have cool climate fruits, such as apples, pears, lemon and grapefruit. We move through to stone fruit — peaches, apricots — and then to tropical fruits — for instance pineapple, guava, mango. This ‘spectrum’ is an indication of the ripeness of the grapes and can give us a clue as to the climate in which the grapes are grown. To generalise, the more towards the tropical end of the spectrum, the warmer the climate.

: Part of the ‘fruit spectrum’.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and some wines have distinct aromas of certain fruits — Gewurztraminer typically smells of lychee for instance. It’s interesting to note that very few wines actually smell of ‘grapes’. Perhaps this reflects the reduced variation in table grapes we have available to us in a globalised, homogenised food market — most of the table grapes I’ve seen in supermarkets around the world are Thompson Seedless. Although there is of course the argument that if grapes are fine enough to be made into wine, why would you waste them on a table! Wines made from Muscat are one exception to this rule, and are often described as having a ‘grapey’ aroma.

As far as non-fruit aromas go, we can have vegetal or herbaceous aromas — Sauvignon Blanc is often described as smelling of gooseberry and nettle, or even tomato leaf. Shelled peas, grass and hay are all terms I’ve used more than once too. Wines can smell musty or animally too, which is not always a pejorative term. Loire Chenin Blanc can have an intriguing aroma commonly referred to as ‘wet wool’! And of course we have flowers. Muscat smells of orange blossom; Chablis can be reminiscent of lilies. If you know your flowers you’ll be able to discover all sorts of comparisons with wine. Image Copyright. All Rights Reserved

You’ll often hear the term ‘minerality’ thrown about in wine descriptions. Minerality is more commonly used to describe a component of taste, and exactly what it means is a matter than is hotly debated. As far as aromas go, some wines do have a sort of chemical smell such as flint, gunpowder, kerosene, petrol or wet asphalt. Again, these are not always used in a negative way. The most complex wines will have elements from all categories in varying degrees and over the course of a meal or tasting different aspects of the bouquet will come to the fore, while others will recede in prominence as your nose gets used to smelling them.

The final aspect of the nose of a white wine may be the presence of oak. If a wine has been aged in new French oak, you may expect aromas of vanilla, butter, nuts, spices, or even freshly sawn planks — if the wine is very young. American oak has a more lifted, slightly confected aroma often described as coconut, but also as white chocolate.

As you’re picking up, wine is a complex concerto of hundreds of aromatic compounds. As humans, we’re lucky enough to be able to smell even some of the, though it can take practice to identify what exactly we smell. As with everything though, it is simply a matter of starting to pay attention to what we’re smelling, both in and out of the glass.