Tasting Fundamentals: Wine Aromas

I have been told that if I want to become better at distinguishing wine scents, I should start smelling almost everything in sight: flowers, herbs, even dirt. Then I can pinpoint scent associations with wine aromas easily. Aroma kits, kitchen spices, and farmer's markets are a great place to start.

Step into a winery for a tasting, and a common scene includes individuals swirling wine and sticking their noses into the glass to smell the aromas. At second glance, scanning the room to find an available table, one might find a clumsy individual, (me) in a precarious situation from a swirl mishap with wine everywhere. But, I digress...

Swirling wine and savoring the aromas of a specific wine varietal can be difficult to learn. For me, the most difficult part of this is naming the aroma. I love Cabernet Sauvignon. When I lift the glass for a whiff of wine I usually smell a scent that is so hard to describe.

Would a sommelier cringe hearing “whiff” instead of detecting the wine’s nose, the delicate balance of aromas put forth by the vintner's efforts?

Upon first smelling the wine, it might smell sweet. What is that one moment I keep coming back to every time I whiff a glass of cab sauv? I can hear Christmas music play and smell gingerbread baking in the oven. That’s it! I smell the cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar and deep, brown molasses I use while baking my annual gingerbread house.

Yes, I know, who takes the time to bake a gingerbread house when it can easily be purchased at a store? Every year I ask myself the same question, and I still take an exorbitant amount of time to make gingerbread.

Yes, the wine scent is reminiscent of the cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar and molasses mixing in the KitchenAid. But what name would be attributed to the sweet, brown sugar scent? The scent I am whiffing is dark cherry jam. That’s it!

I have been told that if I want to become better at distinguishing wine scents, I should start smelling almost everything in sight: flowers, herbs, even dirt. Then I can pinpoint scent associations with wine aromas easily. This is where purchasing a wine aroma kit can be helpful. I had never heard of a wine aroma kit until I enrolled in an educational wine course through Napa Valley Wine Academy and learned of an aroma kit through a daily email. Aroma kits include small vials that help individuals pinpoint certain wine aroma attributes. This can help distinguish what grape is used to make wine. It can even help confirm where the grape was grown. Now, if you are the type of person who thinks, “Well, that can easily be distinguished by reading the damn bottle label.” Then an aroma kit is probably not for you. For novice wine drinkers looking to expand their skills, this is a great starting point to expanding your practice. Le Nez du Vin has a few aroma kit options. The MasterKit includes 54 aromas of red and white wine, priced around $400. The Duo Kit includes 24 aromas of red and white wine, priced around $230.

However, these wine kits can be expensive for someone like me with a few kiddos, a mortgage, and student loans. Spending $200 to $400 for a kit doesn’t make sense. So, I took to the internet to research different aroma kits and found that Wine Folly has an at-home aroma kit blog. It describes all the spices and tools one could use to start an aroma kit at home. For me, this is a budget-friendly way to start a wine novice’s aroma kit especially since I have most spices tucked in my kitchen cabinets. Since my husband is from India, throughout our marriage I’ve learned to make various Indian dishes that use a large variety of spices. Because of this, my spice rack is well stocked. Even with my extensive spice collection, there are many spices I had never heard of: asafoetida, hing, fenugreek, ajwain to name a few. Cooking Indian cuisine is daunting because of all the spices it uses, but my current collection has created a great starting point to learn different aromas of wine. Plus I have all the whole spices needed to start an at-home aroma kit. From now on, every time I make a dish of chana masala, I stop to smell each spice as I add it to the ghee to make sure I am associating the scent to each spice.

Additionally, it is seasonally fitting that farmer’s markets recently opened and one can stroll the booths to smell the flowers and herbs offered. I decided this would be another good starting point to distinguish wine aromas. So I headed to the Spokane and Liberty Lake Farmers Markets to see what items I could smell to associate more items to wine aromas. There were so many booths to stop and take a nice big whiff.

Whichever way you decide to develop your sense of smell, the most important thing I have learned is to stop and smell the roses (and EVERYTHING else).

Have you had any experience with aroma kits or made your own aroma kit? What other methods have you used to recognize wine aromas? I would love to hear your experiences by commenting below.

Cheers!