Smelling Wine from the Top of the Glass

"Step two in smelling a wine is a little bit different than the first step. You may recall, in the first step of wine smelling we swirled the glass, we put out nose in the bottom of the glass, and we inhaled deeply. We got our fruity aromas down there. Here's something very interesting; when you swirl your glass of wine you're taking those aromatic compounds and dissolving them in air. As soon as you stop swirling, the heavy aromas fall down; we just got those in the bottom of the glass; However, the lighter aromas are floating up, and out of the glass. We have to capture those, so the second step of wine sniffing is to put your nose inside the top of the glass as far up as it can go, so we'll capture those lighter aromas; like this; swirl, stop, inside the top of the glass. You will be amazed at how different the wine smells at the top of the glass than at the bottom. This is a generalization; However, if there's floral, rosy, lavender, wildflower, perfume aromas; they'll probably be at the top of the glass. If there are spicy aromas; whether it be black pepper; or something sweeter; like ginger, clove, nutmeg or cinnamon, you'll probably capture that at the top of the glass; bottom of the glass for fruit; top of the glass for flowers or spice; amazing."