Putting Words to a Smell
Step 1/813 min read0% read
Putting Words to a Smell
What's ahead
13 min readBeginner
By the end, you will be able to…
- File a smell under its family before hunting for the exact word
- Tell whether an aroma comes from the grape, the cellar or time
- Read a few landmarks: lychee, butter, black pepper, green bell pepper
Step 1/8To begin
You already know these smells
Faced with a glass, most people say "it smells nice" and stop there. Their nose is not the problem — the word is. Blackcurrant, peach, pepper, butter, leather: you have smelled all of these a hundred times, in a kitchen, in a spice drawer, on an old armchair. What does not come, in front of a glass, is the step from the smell to the word.
Drawers
A handful of families to file what you smell.
Two noses
A Gewurztraminer and a Chardonnay, read in full.
Three origins
Knowing whether a smell comes from the grape, the cellar or time.
Step 2/8Chapter 1
Families before words
This encyclopedia describes wine aromas with more than a hundred descriptors. Nobody needs them to begin with: what helps is the handful of families they are filed under. There are fourteen at the top level, and each splits into finer drawers. The frame is the aroma wheel Ann C. Noble published in 1987.
Black fruit
Blackcurrant, blackberry, blueberry, black cherry: thick-skinned berries, darker and sweeter. Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, ripe Merlot.
Red fruit
Strawberry, raspberry, cherry, redcurrant: pale berries with tart flesh. Pinot Noir, Gamay.
A friend hands you a glass of red and asks what you smell. You pick up something dark and fruity, but the exact word will not come.
Faced with this glass, where does an accurate description start?
Step 3/8Interactive exercise
Explore the aroma wheel
Here are this encyclopedia's fourteen families. Open one to see its drawers and descriptors, then ask where each smell comes from. To finish, file a few aromas yourself.
Step 4/8Chapter 2
A nose you know by one smell
On the nose: Gewurztraminer
Primary aromas
- Lychee
- Rose
- Ginger
- Cardamom
- Grapefruit
Secondary aromas
- Cinnamon
- Pot-pourri
Tertiary aromas
- Honey
- Apricot
Lychee is a rare landmark: in wine it most often points to Gewurztraminer, even in its driest versions. Right beside it, rose. The rest of the panel files itself easily — fruit, flowers, spices, honey.
A smell of lychee in a glass. Which of these three varieties gives it?
Step 5/8Chapter 3
Where a smell comes from: the grape, the cellar, time
This is the most useful idea in the course, and it explains why a ten-year-old wine smells nothing like the same wine at two. A wine smell has an origin, and there are only three.
Primary: the grape
They come from the grape: fruit, flowers, herbs, spices such as Syrah's black pepper. Some are already free in the berry; others, like Sauvignon Blanc's thiols, are mostly bound up in precursors, from which yeast frees them during fermentation.
Secondary: the cellar
Born of fermentation, lees or barrel ageing: butter, brioche, vanilla.
Tertiary: time
The ageing bouquet, after several years in bottle or long oxidative ageing: forest floor, mushroom, truffle, leather.
An old red smells of truffle, leather and forest floor. Where do these smells come from?
Step 6/8Chapter 4
A nose that reads in three stages
On the nose: Chardonnay
Primary aromas
- Lemon
- Green apple
- White peach
- Hawthorn
- Linden blossom
- Gunflint
Secondary aromas
- Butter
- Brioche
- Vanilla
Tertiary aromas
- Hazelnut
- Honey
- Quince
Chardonnay is not recognised by a single smell: it reads in three stages. The grape: lemon, green apple, white peach, hawthorn. The cellar: butter and brioche, from malolactic fermentation and lees ageing; vanilla, from new oak. Time: hazelnut, honey, quince, at around eight to twelve years.
A note of fresh butter. Only one of these three varieties carries it in its entry: which?
Step 7/8Chapter 5
What the cellar adds
Malolactic fermentation
Lactic acid bacteria turn sharper malic acid into softer lactic acid. Along the way they make diacetyl: the smell of butter.
Oak barrel ageing
The wood gives the wine vanillin (vanilla) and oak lactones (coconut); the cooper's toasting of the staves adds toasty notes.
Where does each of these smells come from? Match it to its origin.
Pick an item, then its partner in the other column.
Step 8/8Chapter 6
When a molecule marks a variety
Some varieties have an impact compound: one molecule that is enough to evoke their most typical smell. These are landmarks, not proof: other varieties can carry the same molecule in smaller amounts.
Gewurztraminer
Cis-rose oxide: rose and lychee at once.
Syrah
Rotundone: black pepper. Syrah is its emblematic variety.
Sauvignon Blanc
Varietal thiols: boxwood, blackcurrant bud, grapefruit.
Cabernet Sauvignon
Methoxypyrazines: green bell pepper.
A Cabernet Sauvignon smells clearly of green bell pepper. What does that note most often signal?
Last question. Black pepper comes from the grape itself, and has had a molecule to its name since 2008. Which of these three varieties is its standard-bearer?
Key takeaways
Three ideas to keep
- Name the family first: "that is black fruit" is already an accurate description.
- An aroma comes from the grape (primary), the cellar (secondary) or time (tertiary).
- An impact compound is a landmark, not proof: other varieties can carry it too.
Words from the course
- Aroma family
- A drawer of the aroma wheel, such as "black fruit", that files related smells together.
- Primary aromas
- Those that come from the grape: fruit, flowers, herbs, spices.
- Tertiary aromas
- The ageing bouquet, after years in bottle or long oxidative ageing: forest floor, truffle, leather.
- Malolactic fermentation
- Lactic acid bacteria turn malic acid into lactic acid, and make diacetyl: the smell of butter.
- Impact compound
- One molecule that is enough to evoke a variety's most typical smell.