Smell

Now that you've swirled the wine and released the bouquet and various aromas, what does the wine smell like?

This is one of the most important steps in the tasting process and yet most people simply do not spend enough time understanding and experiencing a wine's set of smells.

Without the smell, the palate is left stranded because the nose gives your taste buds specific attachments to the more general categories of taste.

What type of nose does it have? The "nose" is a word used to describe the bouquet and aroma of the wine.

Aroma: This refers to the pleasant or desirable odors characteristic of the unfermented grape. Quite often wine will smell like other fruits that we are familiar with. Distinct aromas reveal sufficient characteristics to differentiate this wine from other wines, but they are not intense enough to produce varietal identification.

Bouquet: This refers to odors produced by the interaction of aroma substances with the container, with small amounts of oxygen, and with one another. These odors that develop in wine after fermentation are called tank aging bouquet and bottle bouquet.

Tank aging bouquet encompasses most of the odors that come from oak, if it is used, and the compounds formed by aroma substances interacting with air entering through the walls of the cask.

When a wine is bottled it contains an abundance of compounds in high states of oxidation. The gradual reduction of these reactions gives rise to new substances whose odor is designated as bottle bouquet.

A good example of the differences between aroma and bouquet are those descriptors found in the "fruity" category versus those found in the "woody" category.

Another is that aromas are more often simple scents found in nature, such as mint or pine, while bouquet is often the result of the processing of the wine, such as oak or butter.

Another interesting point is that you're more likely to recognize some of the defects of a wine through your sense of smell. Below is a list of some of the negative smells in wine:

Vinegar: Too much acetic acid in the wine
Sherry, nutty: Too much oxidation
Musty, corky: Defective cork
Burnt: Too much sulfur dioxide

Sulfur dioxide is used in many ways for winemaking. It kills bacteria in wine, prevents unwanted fermentation and acts as a preservative. However, a good wine should never retain the smell of sulfur dioxide. This smell creates a burning and itching sensation in your nose, not smells we would generally like to associate with a glass of wine; especially if it happens to be one we are drinking.