As an aid to novice wine
tasters - and experts too - the wine scientists at the University of
California at Davis, one of the US's leading wine-making and
grape-growing schools, came up years ago with something called the "aroma
wheel."
The oenologists at Davis consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine
tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine for the
smells of wine. Then they organized them, categorized them, eliminated
all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear, and ended up with a list of
12 major categories of wine smells, subdivided into 29 subcategories and
in 94 specific terms.
The original "wheel" was so called because it was displayed as a circular
table, with relatively similar smells placed close together around its
circumference. (Colored plastic laminated copies of the wine aroma wheel
may be obtained from A.C. Noble, Dept. Vit. & Enology, Univ. California,
Davis, Calif 95616.) The wheel can be viewed on the
UCDavis Website.)
You don't need a wheel to get rolling, however: The information is just
as useful in the form of a list, starting at noon and moving around the
clock from "fruity" through "nutty" and "earthy" around to "floral,"
"spicy" and back to fruity again.
If you want to get more out of your wine, try your next tasting session
with the list at hand, scanning the categories in search of the exact
word to describe what you're smelling.
The following list is a sample, leaving out some of the more obscure and
technical terms, but you'll find all the usual aromas rounded up here:
|
Fruity |
Citrus -
grapefruit, lemon; berry - blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, black
currant (cassis); tree fruit - cherry, apricot, peach, apple;
tropical fruit - pineapple, melon, banana; dried fruit - strawberry
jam, raisins, prune, fig. |
|
Vegetative |
fresh -
stemmy, cut green grass, bell pepper, eucalyptus, mint; canned-cooked
- green beans, asparagus, green olive, black olive, artichoke; dried
- haw-straw, tea, tobacco. |
|
Nutty |
walnut,
hazelnut, almond. |
|
Caramelised |
honey,
butterscotch, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, molasses |
|
Woody |
vanilla,
cedar, oak, smoky, burnt toast, charred, coffee. |
|
Earthy |
dusty,
mushroom, musty (mildew), mouldy cork. |
|
Chemical |
petroleum
- tar, plastic, kerosene, diesel; sulphur - rubbery, garlic, skunk,
cabbage, burnt match, wet wool, wet dog; papery - wet cardboard;
pungent - acetic acid (vinegar); other - soapy, fishy. |
|
Pungent |
hot -
alcohol; cool - menthol. |
|
Microbiological |
yeast,
sauerkraut, sweaty, horsy, "mousey." |
|
Floral |
orange
blossom, rose, violet, geranium. |
|
Spicy |
cloves,
black pepper, liquorice, anise. |
Use the "wheel" as a guide when you're
tasting wine for fun ~ you'll be surprised to see how well this list of
descriptive terms will help you recognize those elusive characteristics.
|
