Taste The Aromas

Kimberly Grasso

Appreciate Wines Aromas – What is the best way to appreciate a wines aroma? By taking repeated short sniffs (like dogs do?)or by inhaling deeply and slowly two or more times? When blending and testing my custom perfume blends for clients, I use the first but what to do with wine?

According to studies done at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a scientific institute for research on taste and smell, one stated that the “optimum perception” among sniffs in humans is between .39 and .64 seconds, suggesting short sniffs are most effective. Another study said that “natural” sniffing is best for everyone, and you can’t do much more to improve the efficiency of sniffing. That is, a single sniff gives you just as much information as multiple sniffs-when we sniff several times in a row, it’s just to confirm our impressions, not necessarily to collect more data. So as an example, when I am blending perfume and there are a mix of scents, several sniffs in a row are needed to discriminate among all the different notes, or components. So then what is best for wine?

It’s the difference between sniffing once to realize “oh yes, that is wine” and sniffing several times more to pick out all the complexities in a wines aromatics. “Oh this is a nice wine and I am smelling spice, cola and sassafras”