Guide
Wine Tasting Aromas
Take a deep breath, relive the memories wine aromas bring back to you.
As an aid to novice wine tasters – and experts too – the wine scientists at the University of California at Davis came up years ago with something called the “aroma wheel.” UC Davis is one of the US’s leading wine-making and grape-growing schools.
The oenologists at Davis consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine. They specifically focused on the smells of wine and the memories it induced. Afterwards, they organised them, categorised them, and eliminated all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear. What they ended up with was a list of 12 major categories of wine smells. This list was subsequently subdivided into 29 subcategories and into 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. Alternatively, 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. Take a sip and then scan the categories in search of the exact word to describe what you’re smelling.
The oenologists at Davis consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine. They specifically focused on the smells of wine and the memories it induced. Afterwards, they organised them, categorised them, and eliminated all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear. What they ended up with was a list of 12 major categories of wine smells. This list was subsequently subdivided into 29 subcategories and into 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. Alternatively, 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. Take a sip and then scan the categories in search of the exact word to describe what you’re smelling.