Identifying Primary Aromas in Wine Tasting

Video Transcript

"When I teach people how to taste wine, I approach the step of wine aromas by asking them t pick up the glass, very quickly bring it up to their nose, putting their nose down into it, taking a nice deep inhale, putting the glass down, and thinking about what they smelled; kind of like this. Usually people look confused, and I have to draw it out of them. I say, what do you smell, what do you smell? Sometimes they say; well Miss Jane, I smell alcohol, or I smell wood, or I smell fruit, or spice, and I say; okay, thank you very much, but what do you really want to say? Eventually somebody will say; Miss Jane, I'm sorry, but it smells like wine; and I say thank you very much, and I give that person a round of applause, because they're right. What I asked them to do by just picking up the glass and putting their nose in it, and smelling, was just to get the initial impression of the smell of a wine, or the wine's primary or first aroma, and a wine's primary or first aroma will be; smells like wine. They don't pay us Sommeliers to walk around saying smells like wine, so we made up a word for that, and the word for a wine's primary aroma; (smells like wine) is vinosity. It has vinosity, or it is vinos; smells like wine; that's the way it should be. After that, you can use some more intensified wine smelling techniques to bring out all the other aromas and bouquets in a wine, but the first smell will always be, smells like wine."