Uncommon Scents: The Essence of Wine Tasting

A winery is a sensual experience.

A winery wakes up parts of you that you don’t usually pay attention to. It evokes your senses in ways you don’t normally use them, and it brings back forgotten memories. Aromas are a major stimulus for memories—think Grandma’s cookies coming out of the oven or walking into the dentist’s office.

I’d be fine with not remembering the dentist’s office but none of us can help it. The olfactory nerve which leads from your nasal cavities to your brain by-passes the neocortex —the conscious thinking part of your brain—and goes straight to the amydala—the instinctive part of your brain. So, the memories are there before you can even notice that they are there much less control them.

Memories are important in identifying wines by comparing them to other wines you may have had years ago. And in telling the difference in a French cabernet and a Napa cabernet for instance. Or, telling the difference in wine aged in oak barrels vs wine aged in redwood barrels (old style). Or, grass from hay.

Wineries smell of yeast (like fresh bread baking), and old wooden floors and of wine stained concrete. The air is thick with the metallic smell of tanks in the tank yard and there is the smell of grape must (juice) in harvest and of rain in winter. The rain brings out the earth smells from the vineyard.

A winery is full of anticipation and promises.

Wine tasting is a sensual surprise. You never know what you’re going to get. The aromas are the point, and to a lesser extent the tastes, but your whole body gets involved.

Tightening up under the social pressure, contracting your muscles in fear or intimidation, worrying about whether you’ll be right or wrong—all those things make it harder to notice what’s going on that’s not worry or fear or intimidation. A mind filled up with social consequences has no room for surprises, sensual or otherwise.

And, wine tasting is about nothing if not surprises.

Relaxing, breathing, and dropping your weight into your legs—generally putting your attention inside your body instead of outside on the glass— opens up the opportunity to notice what arises in your mind in reaction to the wine itself. That’s counter intuitive of course. Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the wine in the glass?

Yes, definitely. But those smells become conscious in your mind first. That’s where your attention needs to start. It’s those first few unforced images and reactions that are the truth. So, you have to be watching for them.

In some ways it’s like remembering a dream. If you can’t identify something in the dream your mind will start filling in stuff from your imagination. It’s the same with those first impressions of the wine. If you can’t immediately identify what you are smelling, your mind will fill in all kinds of colorful things that may be entertaining but they are not accurate.

And if you find yourself thinking, then you’ll miss the immediate experience. Thinking about what you are noticing adds to the detail and the richness of the experience but if you go against your first impressions you are usually wrong.

Free associations, memories, and checking against that library of smells built up in your head all matter but if you have no reaction at first then making up for it by imagining something you think should be there will lead you away from what’s actually going on in the glass.

It helps to be fine with not knowing. If somebody tells you it tastes like West Texas Crude that doesn’t mean it’s true anyway. The trick is to separate the immediate experience of smelling the glass from all the infinite number of associations that come up immediately as soon as you think about it.

Don’t worry. You won’t lose those associations. Lot’s of famous wine experts think that associations are the only thing there is in wine tasting.

Different levels of sensitivity and practice mean different people can notice different things in a wine at the same time and all be right.

If you stick your nose in the glass and come up blank, don’t worry. Just wait. Sometimes of course, there really is nothing there. Certain Sauvignon Blanc’s for instance are indistinguishable from ice water. Don’t get me started on Albarino.

But, other times you just need to relax and trust that your brain is doing something even though you don’t know what it is yet. Wine tasting at its best requires an acute awareness of your senses right now, in the present moment.

Your mind doesn’t always want to stay present. Your attention is jumping around like a wild monkey in the trees, and you are stuck trying to jump around and follow it. All that jumping around is distracting and if you’re not careful, you’ll miss what is literally right under your nose.

Most people feel obligated to say something right away so they compulsively say blurt out things like, “It’s a little like old strawberries growing on the west face of Mount Waxahatchie” or “Tastes like diesel fuel to me”. If you’re uncertain just nod your head and wait for somebody else to say something and agree with them.

Lots of people aren’t there for the wine at all of course. They are there to make a deal, or impress that girl from work, or, against all reason, for the food.

It’s also true that some people just want to get plowed. In passing I’ll just note that vodka does that quicker and to more effect if that is your goal.

There are all kinds of other reasons—some people want to overcome shyness in social situations or to forget that day at work or find courage. Warriors for thousands of years have drunk wine (and beer) to get fired up enough to go whack on each other.

Wine can do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with training your senses.

But it is the acute awareness of your own senses that we train when we train people to taste wine.

notice what you notice

The way you’re going to make a dent in those trillion smells is to stay in the present moment and notice what you notice. To the extent that your mind jumps to the past or into the future, to the extent you can’t lay your attention on one thing and leave it there, you will make mistakes.

So how are you going to separate those smells?

The first part of that has nothing to do with wine per se (that’s Latin for “in itself”—it’s useful for snooty tastings with people who want to be rich but aren’t). It has everything to do with your ability to notice what you notice. What does a banana actually smell like? And how does it change as it ages? What about butter? How are the smells of butter different than margarine or other fats like olive oil?

Can you keep your attention on the smell of chocolate long enough to recognize what it is if nobody told you what you were smelling? Notice the smells around you then close your eyes and see if you can remember what it smells like. It’s trickier than it sounds.

After you take a moment to remember that smell, go back to the chocolate or the butter or the banana and see how close you were. Label it in your mind—”butter,” “chocolate,” “fresh baked bread.” Or, nail polish, vinegar or sweat.

Those last three are bad things. You must be able to recognize and label the smells first, then you can learn what caused them to appear in the wine, and then you can do party tricks like James Bond.

You can develop your skill anytime you are conscious and some times you can even do it in your dreams. I don’t remember smells in my dreams very often but when I do they are unmistakable and unforgettable.

Practicing anytime and anywhere you are can reveal all kinds of things that are going on around you that you would have missed.

There are also kits and processes to help which we will talk about in a future issue, but for now just notice if you notice any smells around you. It may surprise you. I hope so.

The more you practice the better you will get. If wine is your goal, just practice things that have wine smells in them along with everything else.

You will be amazed how noticing your senses opens up and expands your experience of yourself and of the world. It’s even a basic technique for some forms of meditation.