05/29/08 Smells In Wine

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Someone asked me if I could really smell all of those things in a glass of wine or was I just making it up? On today's program we'll talk a little bit about the wine speak used to describe wine smells. Wine Speak  that's what I call the way people in my industry communicate about wines. It is a language just like any other industry. I mean who else but the engineers really use and those crazy mathematical terms when they're just chatting? Well one of the most common ways for people to identify and describe wines to one another is to describe the smells. Because, as I've told you time and again, most of your ability to perceive flavor comes from your sense of smell. So when we claim to smell raspberries, cherries, vanilla, toast  it's not the product of an over active imagination - it's true. We do smell these things and once you practice it enough you will smell many new things and you will begin to notice that the vanilla is usually a sure sign that oak was used in the making of the wine and that cherries are often in Cabernet Sauvignon and raspberries in Pinot Noir. Now it's not that there are actually cherries or raspberries in the wine, it's just that they share the same chemical structure of those flavor compounds and you can smell it in the wine. So start with the obvious and look for the smell of fruit and see where it takes you take it you - the next time you smell apple in your Chardonnay and ask yourself is it granny smith or red delicious? Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at Vine to Wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.