How important is your sense of smell in the appreciation of wine?

Do you feel you are good at smelling wine? Can you recognise the different aromas in your glass? Is it important?

Smelling wine and being able to appreciate the “nose” of the wine is crucial to understanding wine.

Having a good sense of smell is without a shadow of a doubt THE most important skill you need to really enjoy wine.

The thing is that your sense of smell is not something that you use only for aromas. You will also need a good sense of smell to spot the flavours of wine.

Some “Tastes” are in Fact Smells

Contrary to popular belief the “taste of chocolate” or the “taste of blackcurrant” are not actually tastes… but smells! They are in fact flavours. And the reality is that  flavours are not tastes but smells.

This is why, when you have a cold, and a blocked nose, you feel like you’ve lost your sense of taste. In reality, what you can’t do is smell, and as a result you can’t detect flavours.

Sadly though, the vast majority of us have a very poor nose. By that, I mean that we are extremely poor at using our sense of smell.

It’s not your fault. You probably have great olfactory (smell) sensors to detect smells. But you haven’t been taught to use them.

Your olfactory memory (your memory of smell) has never been trained.

At school, you learn to remember words, sounds, numbers, images… but smells? Tastes?

Sadly, these senses are not developed. It’s no surprise our sense of taste and our sense of smell are so poor. For those of us who love wine, it really isn’t good news at all.

But, I have good news for you! It isn’t that hard at all to program your nose, to educate your sense of smell.

This is why I created the Nose of Wine Box:

• So that you can enjoy wine more.
• So that you can start really understanding wine.
• So that you can easily learn about wine.

But most importantly, it’s just a fantastic, fun way to learn about wine.

Not only do you get 12 key aromas, but you also get the aromas of wine poster. It includes the 55 most important aromas and is a great too to assist you in your wine tastings. The photos will help fire your brain to recognise smells much quicker that with just words.

You also get lots of fun exercises and games. Games to play with your friends or even your kids. Developing your sense of smell can be amazingly good fun!

Alternatively, I also recommend the How to develop your sense of smell workbook which I created a few years ago.

What’s in the workbook?

In this workbook, you’ll first get to learn what aromas are found in wine. You’ll learn about the main families of aromas and what different aromas they each comprise.

You’ll then learn where aromas come from, and why they are important when you’re looking to understand wine or when you try to find out what wines you like.

The 3 Groups of Aromas:

Primary aromas: These aromas are varietal aromas. This means that they come from the actual fruit, the grape, and that each variety has its own specific aromas.

Secondary aroma: These aromas come from the fermentation process, when the grape juice is turned into wine.

Tertiary aromas: These aromas come from the maturation and ageing process. These can come from the oak or can come from the evolution of primary aromas.

And after the theory, you’ll move to part 2: the practical part.

In this part, I will share with you exercises I have developed to quickly help you pick up the most important aromas. Using these exercises and focusing on these key aromas, means you’ll very quickly be able to pick out aromas in practically 90% of all wines out there.

You can download the entire workbook (for free) here.

Follow this workbook and you’ll be picking out aromas of blackcurrant in Cabernet and finding the notes of green apple in your glass of Chardonnay in no time.

Finally, I have a few practical tests for you to have fun developing your sense of smell. I use these exercises to develop my 6-year-old son’s sense of smell. He absolutely adores these tests and probably has a better nose than me now. So it’s highly recommended as a family exercise too. Let me know how you did.

Be sure to grab the workbook. Download the entire FREE workbook here.

CONCLUSION

Yes developing your sense of smell is not a quick and easy skill to pick up. But it is an absolutely necessary skill you need to enjoy wine and to learn about wine. There are many tools to help you accelerate learning, especially the Nose of Wine Box and the How to develop your sense smell workbook. You’ll see enhancing this sense can be great fun! Plus the rewards are fantastic!