Question: How to train nose and palate

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice, practice, practice" (Apologies to Henny Youngman.)

Seriously, taste and pause to consider. Talk to whomever you are sharing the wine with. Sniff, swirl, sniff. Swirl, sniff, taste. Hold in your mouth...ponder the taste. Wait, repeat, consider and discuss. Think about the nuances. Why is this wine different than the one you had yesterday or last week?

There are kits of essences of various smells and tastes, some inexpensive and some off-the-charts outrageous. I'm not sure they are better than pulling corks and tasting.

Attend tastings or tasting dinners in which someone will be there to point out the differences.

Pair wines at a sitting and compare them for differences.

Take notes. Jot down impressions. Revisit your notes on subsequent bottles.

So many wines, so little time. Practice, practice, practice.

Ed Rasimus Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret) "When Thunder Rolled" "Phantom Flights, Bangkok Nights" Both from Smithsonian Books

I wouldn't disagree with any of Ed's advice, but I would add...

Don't be too disheartened if you cannot identify the range of fruits etc that other claim to detect. The fruit-basket style of tasting note is a relatively recent phemononen, and if you compare note from different notes for the same wine you will often see wildly different descriptors.

If you detect, e.g., strawberries or whatever, then fine - take a note of it - it will help you remember your experience, If you don't, don't worry - be honest to yourself.

Vincent, Keep in mind that you can read three reviews of the same wine and they'll use enitrely different descriptors to describe it, much like the three blind men and the elephant. Most of us feel that the overblown prose used by Parker and the Spectator are a bit too much, but to each their own. You can train your "organoleptic memory" by smelling individual scents and committing them to memory, such as the smell of a fresh, ripe pineapple (or raspberry, or canteloupe, etc.). Alternatively or additionally, you can buy a kit like "Le Nez du Vin" that is designed to assist your learning different smell descriptors.

Also keep in mind, however, that we are not all equally endowed with the ability to distinguish and remember individual smells. Robert Parker, for instance, is widely reputed to have a nearly freakish ability to remember smells and recall them on demand. I know that in my case, I began to notice and remember characteristic smells as a child. I used to play a game with my mother where I'd walk into the house at dinnertime and tell her what she was cooking from the lingering smells. Practice does improve our abilities, but native talent does also count for a lot.

Good luck in your quest, Mark Lipton

Vincent,

You have some good advice, that follows - plus my comments that I could not resist (sorry).

Question: can you smell in your environment, beyond wine? This is not a trick question. Maybe your olfactory senses are not where you would like them to be. This could have several physical, or even heredity causes. My wife has slight asthma, and, though a great chef, cannot discern many of the nuances in wine that I find. The same can be said for many in my informal tasting group. This is not a problem to the enjoyment of wine, though it is a deterrent to complete enjoyment. As Ed comments, the "practice, practice, practice... " aspect is a very good one. If you do not have a physical problem with sensing the smells around you, then this is the best way to "learn" to pick out the various aromas in wine. One of the best ways to separate the smells is to do the various tasting segments, swallow, then slowly exhale, partially through your mouth, and partially through you nose, concentrating on the smells that you now pick up. This retro-nasal smelling concentrates what smells exist to the sensors located deep in your nasal/oral passage. This usually yields stronger impressions, than does just sniffing the wine in the glass.

Half way to the retro-nasal move, it often pays to cover the glass with your hand, as you swirl. Clean hands, without smell of soap, or lotion is a MUST! Once you have swirled the wine, un-cup one side of your hand, and stick your nose into that smaller opening. Again, this concentrates the aromas, and doesn't let them dissipate too quickly.

As strange as it might seem, I also practice my olfactory perception by reading from William Faulkner. Much of his description of place and person relies very heavily on the sense of smell. As a place is described, I let my mind, and my olfactory memory wander, to see if I can recall that smell. While this might be a bit meta-physical, I find that many everyday aromas, can transport my mind to a long ago, far away place. This is part of the practice.

I'll also go out and try to find rather common wine smell descriptors, if they are not in my memory bank. Gooseberries (often associated with SB) are not that common in the US. For me to know what a gooseberry smells like, I had to hunt all over for an example that did not come out of a can.

Kendall-Jackson has a new facility in Sonoma, and whatever one might think of their wines, or their marketing, the facility is excellent for sensory instruction. They have planted a sensory garden with items that are common wine smells and tastes, and also with items that are complementary to those very tastes. There is also a small vineyard that is planted with most of the varietals that are grown in the US, where, depending on the season, you can actually taste the various grapes, and decide which ones have what element(s), just from the grape, regardless of the vinification method(s).

What I would recommend is to take Ed's advice, and add a copy of "Light in August," or some other Faulkner. A nice Zin would probably compliment the book, and just tell your family that you are "in training!"

Regardless, enjoy, at what ever level you can, Hunt

I thought everone knew that gooseberries tasted like SB :-)

I recently tried lychees (canned, not fresh, and not as a palate/nose improvement exercise) and immediately thought "this tastes just like gewurztraminer".

Another comment for our OP: Even for tastes/smells you thiink you understand, it can be very useful to try them side-by-side. A useful excercise for me was to try a range of citrus fruits at the same time.

Your problem is not only training your nose and palate; it's also training your sensory vocabulary. You need to associate words with smells and tastes. That's easier said than done, however. Some have a talent for it and many don't. If you don't, don't worry about it. Just enjoy. This is not the Pass/Fail Test of Life. ;^/

Tom S

When I started with drinking wine I had similar problems... I could understand differences between good and bad but lacked the words to describe what i thought of the wines. The way I learned was not only drinking and tasting lots of wines but also doing this in tasting groups. A good way to enhance your vocabulary is listening to what other more experienced tasters have to say about the wine... and discuss it with them... I found that pretty soon I was able to use those words too...

Also I found out that a lot of people using bombastic words and wine-lingo where often just setting up smoke screens not to show they actually had no sense of taste. And even very experienced tasters and professionals often have preconceptions on what should be good and what should be bad. They often rate wines which are not there "cup of tea" much lower than they actually are worth (and vice versa)

Take Parker... He's pretty famous here for not knowing his red Burgundy wines (even Pinot Noir wines from other regions in the world) and often not appreciating them (which is fine be me because i wouldn't like to see those Parker followers with large wallets trying to buy my style of wines). Take a "double wooded", heavy, over the top wine and probably Parker will think it's great.

My point is... believe in what you taste and smell and in what you don't taste and smell... be critical and discuss... don't be affraid to say you don't like something when others praise it straight to heaven.

Bas

What He said...... (Ed & Henny) Cheers Mathew