Here’s why your instructor is saying “no”: While wine has unlimited potential for aroma combinations, there is actually a limit to the type of aromas that fermented grapes can express. Likewise, winemaking choices can only yield certain types of characteristics in a wine. This means that in the classroom an instructor might guide you away from a certain type of aroma that you have stated to be present. For example, the presence of vanilla aroma in a wine for a critical assessment would conclude that the wine had been flavored, or more likely, oak aged. If a student smells vanilla in a quality wine, but it has not been oak aged, it is unlikely that vanilla is the actual aroma being picked up on.

BUT there is a reason why the student’s mind is screaming “vanilla!” This is the very personal part of our wine experience: This student’s experience with vanilla is stored within their own unique memories. Perhaps their strongest memory of vanilla aroma is in a tropical fruit and vanilla bean custard tart that they used to get as a child every Sunday with their father from the local bakery. Believing that vanilla is present in this wine is the mind’s its way of attempting to identify one of several aromas that you feel are related to each other. The real trick of identifying aromas in wine is to first recognize that there are numerous, seemingly unrelated aromas that you have unknowingly associated with each other! In the case described with the fruit tart, the student may not be smelling vanilla in the wine, but they could truthfully say that “this wine reminds me of a vanilla custard tart that I used to have as a child.” It may be strong tropical and pastry aromas in the wine that your smell sense has recognized, and your memory is trying to reconcile these signals at the speed of…well…memory.

Essentially, wine is personal not because we all smell and taste different things in wine, but because it taps into our memories to retrieve information that we’ve stored in different ways. How our assessment of smell comes out is what is unique, but the actual aromatic compounds will be concrete “truths.” As explained in March’s Mindful Drinking blog post, we store information from multiple senses together, which means our memory is less like a collection of individual smells and more like stored “whole-sensory experiences” that we piece apart for information. When we stick our nose in a glass of wine and say it smells like flowers, we may actually have combined the aroma of certain flowers and strawberry together because our grandma’s purse had a distinct smell from her perfume, blush, and those little strawberry candies. There is no doubt that this is exceptionally personal.

But take this into a classroom and wine assessment can become much more difficult, if not impossible. In formal wine tasting assessment, blind tastings, or in an exam setting the wine has clues that we need to be able to find and identify accurately. These tell us about what a the wine is, where it is from, how the grapes ripened in the year they were harvested, and how the wine was made. Here, wine is still personal, but it is also textbook.

A great wine instructor should be able to hear your assessment of a wine and encourage you to keep digging for the truth as it relates to your past experiences with aroma-memory. And, a great student should keep true to the course, slowly pulling out the individuality of aromas in their memory to strengthen their wine assessment. Thankfully, no amount of studying wine will replace casually sitting with a wine and enjoying the memories and emotions it can call out of you. Remember that the human experience is stored personally, and wine assessment is both more difficult, and more enjoyable because of it.

Strengthening the mind-palate connection to prevent this aromatic denial builds us a bridge for sensory recall, and it is only as strong as our work-out routine. Wine professionals and connoisseurs can exercise sensory recall just like training a muscle. It’s important to have a regimen with several different types of exercises, and enough repetition to see results. Trust the process, exercise your mind-palate connection when it is the right time for mindful drinking, and make sure you give yourself time to see results! Here are the high-reward exercises to start off a strong tasting routine:

1. SLOW DOWN AT THE RIGHT TIME

Depending on your mindset and the company you’re with, you may be more or less ready to exercise your tasting muscles. For instance, trying to taste after a long day at work may be less effective than tasting first thing in the morning when you are more fresh. Or, on a day off you may open a bottle of wine and perform a tasting by yourself before sitting down for dinner with your family. This could look different from person to person, but finding a time when your mind is focused on skill-building. Then, perform a full tasting that includes sight, nose, and palate assessments. There are public guides out there like from the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET Level 2 in Wines Systematic Approach to Tasting Grid) and you can learn more about tasting technique at any class at the Hill Country Wine Academy.

2. POUR MORE OFTEN

Filling your glass too full means you’ve chosen drinking over tasting, or that you are attempting to taste but are making it more difficult on yourself. When we fill our glasses less we allow the aromas of the wine to fill more of the glass and we encourage the wine to keep changing as the liquid comes up in temperature gradually. Especially if you are enjoying a bottle with company, keep yourself more in touch with the wine by pouring less wine in your glass more often. Pro tip: Establish yourself as the designated “pourer” for your group!

3. ISOLATE YOUR SENSES

Start training your senses in isolation so that they don’t rely on each other like they are meant to do. Smell a strawberry with your eyes closed while you picture wine, and even while holding an empty wine glass. This practice will train your sense of smell away from the rest of your senses. Then repeat. Recognizing aromas in wine will become progressively easier.

4. TASTE MORE OF WHAT YOU DON’T LIKE

Our minds like to pick up and recognize new information, and so constantly drinking and tasting wines we like means we may be dulling our tasting sense over time as the similar aromas of the wine becomes less and less new to us. Familiarity can be a danger to our progress! To keep your palate noticing new nuances in wine we must put newness in front of it, and often. This is similar to the concept that smelling coffee beans in a perfume shop with help to “reset” your sniffer. Keep your nose on its toes.

5. MAKE YOUR TASTING NOTEWORTHY

The way that we store information is connected to our emotions and how strong or notable they are. For instance, if you eat cherries passively one evening you may not be able to recall exactly what the experience was like. But, your very first cherry, or a cherry that you had at a particularly memorable occasion could be implanted in your brain strongly. When you want to build your sense of smell make sure you are active or excited! Play a game, hype yourself up, or go to a new place where the memory of the experience helps to strengthen the sensory memories you’ll store.

Like any work-out it’s important to have good form or else the strength-training goes to waste. Practice your skills with an instructor and then apply what you learn to the wines you interact with outside of class. To find the best way to tap into your palate, reach out to info@hcwineacademy.com or check out our short course collection below!

Santé!

While there are many complementary components and aromas to these wines and dishes, the main idea for these pairings centers aroundthe idea of simplicity with complexity. This means that a simple dish could pair best with a complex wine, and likewise, a complex dish could pair best with a simpler wine. For instance, these sparkling wines have a wide range of aromas: from herbaceous to fruity, to funky, to floral – and even more complexity of texture on the palate with bubbles! The best way to highlight these many components with food is to let the lobster and crab lead the dance without overcomplicating it. Then, watch the wine dance around!

On the flip side, Dolcetto is great at being incredibly fruity, so it is the perfect wine to pair with a complex dish without worrying that the wine may occasionally fall flat. If you take a rich cheese like Fontina to pair with the richness of the wine, the wine’s intense fruitiness will shine through as you go from dipping bread to meat to potato to pickled vegetables. 

 In the case of a blend, like Hunter, several straightforward components in a dish will cause the different varieties in the blend to be gradually highlighted. Shish kabob causes us to eat one component of the dish at a time and then enjoy the wine as it changes down the kabob. 

 In any case, these pairings work because they are more fun to do with a partner. They cause us to get more involved in the food than just mindlessly eating. The wine not only enhances the pairing but causes us to slow down and savor the experience. We hope that food and friends always enhance your love of wine and that wine does the same for food and friendship in turn.