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Aromas and Flavors 101
Ever stand next to someone saying “Ahh, this wine has notes fresh black currants, hand-crushed blueberries, a single strawberry from the top of Mt. Ridiculous, and just a whisper of vanilla bean.” Then when you go to try it, and it just smells like wine?
Happens to me all the time, especially during tasting study groups.
So below I’m going to discuss a little of the science behind tasting wine, and whether or not this all made up to sound cool, or if you can actually detect these things. (Not the single strawberry from Mt. Ridiculous.)
I’m also going to talk about some tips and tricks I use to help focus on what I’m tasting so that I can pull out specific aromas and flavors without it all being lost in in the glass.
Why are there so many flavors in wine?
First off, when people are describing the aromas of a wine, it means that the wine contains the same chemical compounds as the thing they’re describing, NOT that any of those flavors were added to the wine or.
Example: If someone says they detect notes of banana, it’s because one of the many chemical compounds in that wine, is the exact same as the compounds found in an actual banana. It definitely does not mean that the winemaker decided to throw in a couple of bananas during the aging process.
That being said, each wine will contain THOUSANDS of different chemical compounds. This is both good and bad news because it can overwhelm your senses which makes the glass just smell like wine, however, it also means that it’s almost impossible to be wrong when declaring what you smell in a wine, which is great for someone like me who makes a living off of that.
Nerd science
Note: I regrettably do not hold a degree in Organic Chemistry, so this will be a very simplistic explanation of what is going on in your glass.
Why does wine taste and smell different than grape juice?
The simple answer to this is that a fruit, like a grape, will have certain aromas specific to the grape itself, as well as many other compounds that are tied up with its sugars, that get released during fermentation (since the yeast eat sugars and transform them into alcohol.) So that once grape juice is turned into wine, all the specific aromas and flavors of the grape are mixed with the newly released aromas and flavors from the fermentation, resulting in a very complex flavor profile.
Fermentation related compounds
Esters
These are the chemical compounds that are released during fermentation. The aromas from esters are not detectible in the original grape juice both because they have not yet been unlocked by the yeast, but also because the specific strain of yeast itself is going to have an effect on just what types of aromas emerge from the wine.
Esters are typically going to be pretty bright fruit flavors like banana and apple, which can be beneficial depending on the style of wine is being created, but also an indication of age. Typically, the aromas from esters are more apparent in a wine’s youth, so that an older wine would taste and smell more like the flavors associated with that specific grape variety than it might have right after fermentation.
Non-fermentation related compounds
Terpenes
These are the aromatic compounds that are present on the grape itself, typically on the skin. These will be what you are able to smell if you just picked up a fruit at the grocery store and smelled it. It’s also the reason that different grape varieties are going to produce different wines.
Pyrazines
These are specific compounds typically found in things like green bell peppers or jalapeños. They are usually associated with varieties like Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Carmenère which all maintain this aroma through the life of the wine. However, this compound can sometimes be an indication of underripe grapes being used in a wine, which is why you might sometimes hear someone describe the wine as “green”. (Although this has nothing to do with the wines from Vinho Verde in Portugal.)
Diacetyl
This is the compound responsible for the buttery flavor a wine can pick up, most notably Chardonnay. It actually comes from a secondary fermentation called malolactic fermentation, which is a choice made by the winemaker. As you’ve probably experienced, some can add a layer of complexity to a wine, but it’s very easy to overdo it.
Tips and tricks
The good news is that you do not need any superpowers to analyze wine like a somm. There are some people out there born with amazing palates that can detect the most nuanced of flavors without trying. I’m not one of them. Instead, I was able to train myself to pick up on things through focus and many, many glasses of wine. But rather than go through years of studying, I’m going to share with you a few tips to help you say that this wine tastes like wine.
Smell > Taste
Something like 90% of our experience with flavors comes from the smell and not the taste. This is why when you have a cold, nothing tastes like anything. So, before you start drinking the wine, make sure to get your nose in the glass and smell the wine. It’s really not unreasonable to keep swirling and smelling a good wine for like 5-10 minutes before even tasting it, since that’s really where you’re picking up the most flavors, and once you put the wine in your mouth, other factors start to dominate your palate.
Categories
The same way when someone asks you what your favorite movie is, and you all of a sudden forget every movie you’ve ever seen, it can be daunting to pick out a few specific flavors from a wine, even when it seems obvious. So, the best way to narrow it down is to start thinking in terms of categories, things like fruits, vegetables, flowers, wood, to name a few, and then remove any that don’t connect through deduction.
From there you can move to sub-categories and do the same. So, for instance, while smelling a wine you can think “Is there fruit in this wine? If yes, is it berries? Tree fruit? Tropical?” The more you can narrow your thoughts down, the easier it is to isolate the aromas.
Color
A quick way to focus your thoughts is to pick a color and think of anything you may be tasting in that color. For instance, just pick “red” and think if there are notes of cherries, strawberries, apples, cranberries, pomegranate etc.
Condition
Once you get a couple notes down, and you REALLY want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, you can start discussing the condition of that specific flavor. For instance, let’s say you pull out strawberry. You can now start to think about how a strawberry tastes at different stages. Things like: underripe, ripe, overripe, stewed, baked, candied, and even desiccated. Also, this isn’t just a parlor trick, wines will taste like each of these depending on where they’re from and how old the wine is.
Occasionally, you will hear people discuss aromas and flavors of wines in terms of primary, secondary, and tertiary. Each of these lends clues as to how a wine was made, or its age.
Primary
These are the flavors that come directly from the wine itself. Sounds obvious, but it means anything that did not come from manipulation in the winery and are specific to the grapes. These are typically flavors like:
- Berries
- Stone fruit
- Tree fruit
- Flowers
- Herbs
- Tropical fruit
If a wine is showing mostly primary flavors, it means it is probably young, and/or was probably fermented and aged in stainless steel.
Secondary
These are aromas and flavors that come from a process in the winery that is intended to add flavor. Things like oak aging, malolactic fermentation, and lees aging. Flavors usually include:
Oak
- Vanilla
- Coconut
- Spices
- Smoke
- Toast
Malolactic
- Butter
- Cream
Lees
- Cheese
- Beer
- Dough
- Brioche
Tertiary
These are flavors that are going to develop from aging, which means the same wine might not have these flavors are the beginning of its life but will start to add them through aging. They are flavors like:
- Earth
- Mushroom
- Leather
- Honey
- Almond
- Tobacco
- Toffee
- Walnut
Some wines like Burgundies, will have a few of these to begin with due to the terroir, but in general, these start to show up with some age. Also, fruit flavors start to change condition from fresh to dried as the wine gets older.
Does swirling the glass matter?
Yup.
Alright, then what does it do?
So, when you swirl your glass of wine, besides looking fancy, it is going to do two important things:
- Aerate your wine.
- Release aromatics.
Aeration
That wine in your glass has most likely spent a significant amount of time either in the bottle or a tank without much exposure to oxygen, and it’s going to want to breathe. For really young wines like Beaujolais Nouveau, this won’t matter as much, but fora lot of wines, they are aged sometimes for years, both before release and then after if the wine was in a cellar. Wine is actually designed to taste best when oxygen is introduced to it, so that swirling is going to force the oxygen into the wine, which helps sort of open up its aromas and flavors.
Aromatics
The other side of swirling is to release and concentrate the aromatics. Swirling does this by coating the inside of your glass with a thin layer of wine. The reason for this is to encourage evaporation, which as you know, is just the molecules from the wine rising through the air and to the top of the glass. Since the wine gets thin as it clings to the side of your glass, it evaporates much more easily, which enhances the effect of its aromatics. On top of that, alcohol evaporates much more quickly than other liquids, which is why you typically see people swirling wine but not, say, coffee or tea.
Test it yourself.
If you still don’t believe me that swirling is important to your wine tasting experience, the good news is that it is very easily tested. Once you pour yourself a glass of wine, let it rest for a few minutes, and then pick it up and smell it the way you normally would. Try to see what aromas you can detect without swirling.
Then, go ahead and swirl for a few seconds and go right back into the glass and smell it again. The difference should be pretty clear (if you’re using a wine glass, this won’t work with a solo cup.)
Palate fatigue
If you see a somm sniffing their forearm during a wine tasting, it’s not because we’re just THAT into smelling everything, it’s because of palate fatigue. Your nose has a built-in system for filtering out smells that it does not need anymore, especially if they’re really prevalent. This is why you can’t really know what your house smells like, but others are very obvious.
The same thing happens when you keep smelling the same glass of wine to try and find more aromas in it. After just a few attempts, your nose gets bored and stops detecting new notes. To fix this, you can essentially reset your nose/palate by smelling something neutral. For some reason, your forearm does the trick, so if you find the wine isn’t as intense as when you started, go ahead and roll up your sleeve, and reset your palate.
Learning to swirl
It’s a good idea to figure this out before spilling all your wine on the people next to you at the bar.
The best way I learned was to start on a tabletop, holding the base of the glass, instead of in the air. I found that this allowed me to concentrate on the lateral motion first.
The next step is to understand the initial movement of the wine. You want to get some fluid momentum with the liquid to keep it in the glass instead of just spinning it as fast as you can. Once you get that, you can confidently swirl the wine without thinking about it.
Conclusion
The use of oak in wine should always be able to blend in with the natural aspects of that wine. If it’s added simply for flavor, its essentially a cocktail. A great quote from Master Sommelier Brian McClintic goes something like “Oak in your wine should be like salt in your food. You should not be able to taste it, but understand how it enhances the experience.”