Smelling Wine
The swirl of the flavored liquid in the wine glass and the tears fall, the heady smell drifts towards the nose and you plunge into the intricacies of what that glass holds. Swirling the wine excites the molecules of the wine and it rapidly evaporates, intensifying the aromas and the mysteries of what that bottle holds and fruits stored for years gone, remembrances of a bygone time, and then you inhale.The proper procedure of smelling wine is not particular, it depends, some like a deep inhalation while others like to do the sniff routine, the ultimate way to smell a wine is when the aromas are drawn deep inside the nose, to make contact with the olfactory bulb and the mucosa where it is unraveled and demystified into what you think when you take that fist whiff of aromas into your nose. The rule here is that, if you have a cold or an allergy, forget about it, it will block the strongest of flavors and the taste of wine will be mutilated and will not be what you expect. Practice makes a man perfect and the same goes with wine smelling, the smelling of aromas and perception of the overtones and the basetones will gradually improve with time and practice.
Wine tasting will have different perceptions ranging from burnt matchs to chocolate via barnyard smells of tea, mushrooms and tea. You have to train your nose to learn that and the learning is same as learning anything else.
The evanescence of a glass of wine is so complex that what it holds is difficult to understand, our culture tells us that all the clean things are lemony fresh, deodorizing has become a compulsive habit for most of us. The sudden whiffs and smells of a year are then as complex as possible, if we look at that bottle of wine as a thing which holds the fruits of a place, its smells, the way the seasons changed it may give us a small insight into what we hold in our glasses.
Smell is often an evocation of memories, maybe that glass of red will fill you with memories of that childhood trip you took to a farm, or the white fruity scent will take you back to the orchard on the northeast of Italy that uncanny power of smell is concentrated and distinguishes your wine from the others.
Filed under: Beginners Guide
