Dear Wine Geometrists,
I'm sure most of you feel impressed when some guy at a dinner table starts calling wines "bold", "silky", giving hints of "liquorice" or "bell pepper": you're thinking "What does that even mean?" So you let the "specialist" talk his way through to the aromas of the wine, until you actually understand that you're feeling some similar things...
The truth is, YOU also feel something when tasting wine. It's just that
1) Your palate hasn't tried enough wines to detect those little "hints"
2) You have never learned that a wine can be "chalky" or "leathery" and most likely call it a "STRONG" or "FRUITY" wine.
No worries, you're not any worse than that show-off! Now's a time for YOU to brag.
There are two steps in bringing you to the next level. First, we need to have you trying more wines, and that's the purpose of my Category "One week, one wine".
Second, you need to be able to put more precise words on what you're smelling or tasting.
The Wine Aroma Wheel
This is the Wine Aroma Wheel. Basically, it categorizes the different aromas that you can find in wine, going from very simple aromas (it's quite easy to understand if something is fruity, spicy, or woody), and then going into more detail in the composition of the wine.
So my suggestion to you is that every time you taste a wine, you take a look at this Aroma Wheel, and look towards the center of it for "basic" scents. Am I feeling caramel? Fruits? Spices? Herbs?
Once you've found its basic category, you go to the second circle to find more detail. Example, if it's fruity, do I feel berries, tropical fruits, citrus?
Finally, when you've cut it down to its sub-category, you should be able to find its detailed substance: do you feel more red berries or blackberries on your palate?
Please note that there can obviously be more than one category for the wine. Some are spicy AND fruity, some are floral AND nutty for example. So you can go into details into both (or more!) of those categories.
This is definitely a great tool to help you understand and MEMORIZE different wines. It's like if you wanted remember me: you'd rather want to know my characteristics (I'm half-French, half-American, I'm a wine lover, I make videos about wine...) then just saying that "I'm Caucasian". In the first instance, you would be able to cut down the choices when talking about me to a friend, and you would better be able to determine who I am in a large group of people.
Well the same goes for wines. There are so many wines out there, it's almost impossible to remember them all. So you want to put them in categories. Categories geographical location of course, but also of type of wine used, and then of taste observed.
The other benefit of working this way is that you'll be able to COMPARE wines. When enjoying wines from different countries, you'll be able to see how New World wines (from Australia, New Zealand, Chile...) compare to Old World wines. Results can be very different! Some grapes can be used in two different countries and have exactly the same taste, or very different tastes. That's what we want to reach: an understanding of what we're drinking, of what we like, so that, at the end of the day, we're able to go to a bar, a restaurant, and only drink the wines that we love!
So don't hesitate to practice your skills, you're just as good as anyone to become a SHAKESPEARE of wine!
