This article has been extracted from Secrets of Wine by Giles Kime, former editor of Decanter Magazine and is part of the 52 Brilliant Ideas series published by Infinite Ideas.
A decent glass of wine should offer your olfactory system the most enjoyable aromatherapy treatments your palate has ever had.
But getting the most out of the fabulous aromas that good wine can offer is partly down to whether you are prepared to put your nose to work.
There are two secret signs that wine buffs employ to identify one another. One is the way that they hold a glass. No self-respecting wine buff holds a glass of white wine by anything other than its stem. Yes, it looks a little affected, but the reason is wholly practical – so that the clammy embrace of a sweaty palm won’t raise the temperature of the contents.
The other sign is the way that wine buffs taste wines poured for their approval in restaurants. People who are not wine buffs tend to take a hurried sip before nodding appreciatively. Wine buffs, on the other hand, leave the glass on the table and gently rotate the glass while holding the base of the stem between their fingers. After a few seconds they lift the glass to their nose and take a deep, prolonged sniff. Not a molecule of liquid passes their lips.
Ostensibly, the philosophy underlying this approach is that it is possible to judge whether a wine has been corked purely on the basis of its smell. But the procedure also suggests that the wine buff has graduated to the level where their enjoyment of wine is based as much on its aroma as its flavour. And this should be one of the aims of anyone who wants to maximise the pleasure that wine has to offer. The reason that wine offers such an enduring fascination is that it is one of the few liquids that can express such a complex range of aromas.
Smell first, taste later
A surprising number of people rarely smell the wine they are drinking, with the result that they miss out on 80% of its pleasure – particularly when drinking wine with fabulously aromatic qualities. The simple rule is never, ever to taste a wine without smelling it first. Only then will you begin to appreciate the wonderful array of aromas that wine can provide.
Beware of lists of grape varieties and their attributes. A free-thinking drinker should develop the confidence to develop their own opinions about wine. If you’re told that the typical aroma of Transylvanian Pinot Noir is ‘sawdust from a hamster’s cage’, there’s a danger that ‘sawdust from a hamster’s cage’ is how you will perceive this aroma for evermore, even if a better analogy is ‘dust from old floorboards’. Because wine is such a wildly subjective field, it is essential that you build up your own descriptive vocabulary. One taster’s ‘deliciously tropical fruit character’ is another’s ‘smells horribly like Lilt’. Instead of providing such a list, I’m going to suggest another tasting menu that will help you get to grips with the huge range of aromas offered by wine.
Tasting menu
When exploring the wines listed below, write down the names of other smells that they remind you of. Not all these wines have been chosed for their distinctive aroma – some are included simply to demonstrate the range of characters wine can offer.
Aromatic whites: New Zealand Sauvignon, Gewurztraminer, German Riesling, Australian Chardonnay.
Scented reds: good-quality red Bordeaux, New Zealand Pinot Noir, good-quality Australian Shiraz, Australian Cabernet.
Compare and contrast
Having lined up your anonymous glasses of wine, allow yourself plenty of time to fully appreciate their aromas – and don’t even think of tasting them until you have thoroughly explored their characters. Remember: the aromas of individual wines are defined by how they compare with one another.
Idea:
Too often it is possible to sip the contents of a glass without pausing to appreciate the wine’s most important feature – its smell. Try to get into the habit of never tasting a wine until you have fully explored its aroma. Make sure that you smell the wine and return to it three or four times before eventually letting it enter your mouth. This simple ritual will do a huge amount to accelerate your understanding of wine.
by Giles Kime
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