Sparkling Wine Aroma

Video Transcript

"I'm going to tell you about how to smell or approach the aromas of a glass of sparkling wine. Now the aromas of a sparkling wine are very unique. So if you, if you think you know a lot about other wines, and you probably do, just forget about what you know about approaching other wines, because bubbly is very, very unique. First of all, you don't want to swirl a glass of bubbly. It is a minor faux pas. In order to smell a glass of bubbly, you just want to pick it up and bring it up to your nose. You don't swirl it, because if you do, you waste the aroma. You also waste the bubbles that we went through so much trouble to get into the glass, and also you don't need to. You don't need to swirl a glass of wine, a glass of sparkling wine, because the carbon dioxide brings the aromas to your nose which is the whole purpose of swirling. So you just lift it up to your nose, and put your nose in the bottom of the glass. Give a nice long inhale. You'll be very surprised to realize that what you first smell is, is not fruity and sweet and lovely, but it's kind of yeasty, it's toasty, it's nutty, it's buttery and it might even remind you of buttered popcorn. And that's actually what you're supposed to smell. It's called the champagne bouquet and you can use that term even with sparkling wines that are not champagne. And it is, it is a result of the fact that a quality sparkling wine rests in the bottle on the dead yeast cells that created all the bubbles from the second fermentation. It rests there in a process called sur le aging for at least a year and a half, and probably up to five years. And during that time, the yeast cells in the bottle release their yeastiness, their nuttiness and their toastiness, and it's the first thing that you should smell. It's actually the hallmark of a very high quality sparkling wine. So yeasty, toasty, nutty, kind of popcorny, the bottom of the glass. After you smell the champagne bouquet, you can move your nose a little higher and then you might find the other aromas that you're more familiar with like fruit. Maybe a little bit of melon, strawberry, green apple, lemon, lime. Maybe a little bit of flowers, wildflowers, potpourri, honeysuckle, jasmine. A little bit of spiciness, ginger, clove, nutmeg and believe it or not, root beer. And that's about all you should smell in a sparkling wine. It starts with the champagne bouquet, then look for fruity, floral, spicy, and then you're ready to taste. "