Knowing your Nose

Smelling a glass of wine is the first exciting sensory evaluation for me.



Why yes, analyzing the label, feeling the chilled, thick glass of the bottle, carving the foil, and slowly tugging the cork can be enthralling...



...but it is not until the juice is free poured from the bottle into the
stemware and swirled and SMELLED that I really begin to awaken.



Much controversy is caused around the topic of 'to submerge, or to not submerge your sniffer deep into the glass. Some say it picks up too much of the alcohols, which can happen with a younger wine; BUT if you have strong wrists, give your glass a good hearty swirl and some of that alcohol burn will dissipate into the air for a few seconds, giving you the perfect moment to inhale. I have found that you may miss a lot of unique and complex characteristics if you do not fully engage your nostrils into the glass.



I inhale deeply, slowly, and with my eyes closed (super dramatic, yes, but it lets me really focus on what the grapes are communicating and avoids distractions of the bottle or amazing company around).



Sometimes right before I smell, I will open up my mental bank of descriptors and prepare myself to pick up nuances. For example, if I am trying a Cabernet, I will recall some primary descriptors, merely as a starting point, but not limiting myself to those:



"OK....

this could potentially carry dark chocolate, crushed blackberry, anise seed, toasted sweet oak, vanilla bean, cigar smoke, wet stone, blueberry compote... "



(Read a wine book or look at an aroma wheel to start the process of identifying these notes! It will be super helpful every time you drink wine and makes it so much more fun!)



According to one article I found on smelling wine properly:



"...smells are not registered in the nose, but at olfactory receptors located behind the nose and between the eyes and brain. This is one reason why it’s important to “aggressively” sniff wines—you need to make sure the odor gets back to the receptors."

So---my main point of this post is to tell you to not be afraid to smell the hell out of your wine. Don't overlook the amazing aromas you can pick up from an over-dramatic, full inhale. Take a couple minutes to smell your wine and you will gradually find that more and more beautiful aromas will come out of hiding.

Only after you use that nose of yours, will you begin to know your grape...