Le Nez Du Vin – The Nose of Wine
Aromas: Origin and Classification There are more than one thousand aroma molecules that have been identified to wines. However, they only account for one part of wine to a thousand. Where did the aromas come from? A grape starts when the flower forms as a bud. It will give off a very subtle scent. As the fruit develops and with sunshine, the grapes make and store aroma precursors. They do not give off any fragrance of their own. The aromas start during the fermentation process. t the end during the maturing and bottle stages, new aroma molecules from, called tertirary aromas.
Primary An example is with wines made from the Muscat grape family. When you drink this wine, it almost feels like you are biting into fresh grapes. At this point is where you pick up most of the floral and fruity notes
Secondary These are created during the fermentation process mostly with sugars and amino acids. This slowly develops into the wine’s aromatic potential. The aromas of banana, pineapple, apple, butter. As the wine ages, it can take on more aromas of dried fruit, apricots, currants, etc
Tertiary This is where the aromas develop as the wine matures in oak barrels. Here is where you can pick up the aromas of vanilla, fresh butter note, leather, clove, mushroom, chocolate , smoke and much more.
The Sense of Smell 
Without getting all scientific, the sense of smell, the olfactory epithelium carries hundreds of receptors to the brain, which in basically responsible for tasting
Scent Perception when we sniff a wine
Aroma Perception when the wine is in our mouth
Flavor Perception during tasting, the “taste” of the wine
My wine teacher back in the 1970s always stressed to me how to pick out all the differences between Scent, Aroma and Flavors. He would have me right them down next to the wines we were tasting. Honestly, I could pick out a few things , but at that time, my palate was far from trained enough to pick out everything. 
Over the years, I did start to pick up some specific aromas in the red wines. The classic black current, cherry, vanilla noses became clearer to me. When I ran wine tastings , I tried to explain to the audience on how to look for those aromas. Most of the time, that didnt work, unless I had an audience of people who were really into wine. When I ran tastings at the wine shop, I talked about these aromas, but also told people do not fret if you can detect them. Just try to visualize any aroma that you get when you sniff and taste the wine.
A few years ago, a doctor friend of mine gave me a gift “Le Nez Du Vin”, by JeanLenoir. It was a Red wine tasting kit that contained 12 vials of different aromas that are found in wines. 
You would open one vial at a time and smell it. Concentrating on what you are perceiving the aroma to be. Each vial is numbered and the booklet describes the aroma. The first time, I went through all the vials, knowing what aroma they were suppose to be. From that point on, each vial sniffing was done blindly.
It took me about 6 months of doing this 2 or 3 times a week before I was able to pick out a number of those aromas. Some were so easy, Pepper, Truffle, and the easiest
Smoke. But trying to distinguish between Cherry, Blackberry, Black current was a bit harder to do.
The sommelier’s of the world are trained to pick out each of these aromas. It is so interesting to watch a sommelier sniff and taste a wine and in about 30 seconds rattle of 10 or more aromas and flavors that picked up and then another set of traits they picked up from the taste. Not an easy task!
I do believe that aromas are so very important when it comes to picking up wine types. I’ve felt that over the years, my palate was trained well enough to pick up the differences between a Paulliac, a Margaux and a Graves. Since I was French school trained, those were my target areas. But I’ve expanded into the new world of wines, the California sets, Washington State, New York, Australia and New Zealand. I do have to confess, the aroma, the smell, the taste of any Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region of New Zealand is unmistakable.
I strongly recommend for any serious wine person to invest in one of these aroma tasting kits. It has proven so much for my overall experiences.
Remember the Nose
