Wine Smells Frustrating

Describing the aromas of wines can be perplexing to most people who are learning to appreciate wines. In my sophomore years of wine appreciation, I was amused to read aroma descriptors such as lychee, rose water, cigar box, pencil shavings, straw and other descriptors which I had no clue about. I even thought wine producers were deliberately mixing lychee, pencils, erasers and maybe manure into wines to produce these aromas. Of course, they weren't but it was puzzling that what came from grapes did not smell like grapes. To some, the descriptors on the back label of the bottle can be an aid in finding the words to describe the wine. To others, it can also be discouraging if you cannot smell what you "should be" smelling.

The nose is a complex part of our body. Unlike the eyes and the ears, which rely on energy to trigger them, our noses rely on aroma molecules to trigger a response. The nose has its limits as our olfactory receptors can only capture so many molecules at a time. According to Dr. Charles Wysocki from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, "if individuals are constantly exposed over a lengthy session, they become less sensitive to odourants that repeat
themselves, such as oak." This is called olfactory fatigue and it is the body's way of adapting to new levels of stimuli. Some adaptations last only a few minutes before the sensitivity is restored. Constant exposure to the odour can result in adaptation that lasts for weeks even after the source of the odour has been removed.

If you ever wonder that some wine critics or wine label writers are making up the descriptors, there is scientific proof that some of these aromas do exist in wines. Many people are able identify lychee aromas in Gewürztraminer or butter in oaked Chardonnay. More than five hundred chemical components found in wine can also be found in vegetables, fruits and spices. For example, diacetyl, which is found in Chardonnay after malolactic fermentation, contributes to the butter aromas for that varietal. Methoxypyrazine in green beans can be found in Sauvignon Blanc.

This does not mean you can smell them all. The combination of these different
compounds can produce an entirely different smell from what you should be getting individually from each aroma molecule. The sum is greater than its parts. Do it with your eyes closed. The smell you get from sniffing strawberry jam and oranges together is not the same when smelling them apart. It is not as obvious as before that there are two distinct aromas.

There is hope for anyone thinking of giving up wine appreciation because of their inability to detect aromas the way the "pros" do. The answer is practice and more practice. Picking up new smells that we were initially unaware of can be learned through exposure to the odour. Many of us are sensitive to different types of aromas. This is due to many factors such as genetics, physiology, age, gender and psychology. Each person has a different threshold of detection to the different types of aroma molecules. This can lead to various interpretations of
the aroma intensity and why some smell it and some don't.

Being able to express what you smell in words allows one to make comparisons, engage in wine talk, and perhaps, even impress others that you have a nose of a blood hound. But you do not need to be a wine expert to enjoy a good bottle of wine. Wine is more than just what you are able to smell. It is also about your preferences, the ambience and the company whom you are with. Words can never do justice in describing the experience of drinking an elegant and complex wine. In the end, all people want is to have fun and to drink a quaffable wine.

As Len Evans puts it in his book, How to Taste Wine, "I challenge you to describe the smell of strawberries or bananas. We've eaten these fruit since our first memories and they smell like themselves. So it is with wine. The enthusiast has to train and work at these individual characters as hard as possible. As I've said, practice will never make perfect, but we'll have an awful lot of fun along the way."