Sommelier André Hueston Mack is back for another episode of World of Wine, this time trying out a 54-scent aroma kit designed to help sommeliers train and hone their senses.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00So this is a wine aroma kit.
00:02This contains 54 vials of scents commonly found in wine.
00:06Hey, I'm sommelier Andre Houston Mack,
00:07and today I'm going to show you how sommeliers
00:09use this kit to hone their sense of smell.
00:16So the ability to recognize aroma
00:17is very important for a sommelier
00:19to communicate concisely to guess what they're getting,
00:21what they should be getting,
00:22and answer any questions or inquiries that they might have.
00:25I mean, I think a lot of people try to call
00:26on the sommeliers in the wine industry
00:29about what flavors and things that they smell,
00:30aromas that they smell in wine.
00:32It's not a trick.
00:33It's a true thing.
00:33And so recognizing and picking up on these aromas in wine
00:36are key to your job.
00:41So what are we looking at here?
00:42So this is a kit.
00:43It has a name.
00:44It's called L'anez de vin, so the nose of wine.
00:46Here are the vials.
00:47There's 54 of them.
00:48They're all labeled by number.
00:49So you can taste them blind, pull them out here,
00:51and then you can go here to the flashcard set
00:54to the corresponding number,
00:55and it'll tell you what the scent is.
00:56I'm gonna give you a quick run-through
00:57and let you know how it works, right?
00:59So we'll go ahead and pull a scent from over here.
01:01So this is 15.
01:03So I'll go ahead and give it a whiff.
01:05These are pretty powerful.
01:06You don't wanna get so close to your nose
01:07that maybe you touch your nose or you get it stuck there
01:10because you'll be breathing this stuff in
01:11for the better part of the day.
01:13This is Black Currant.
01:14That's what I believe it is.
01:15It says 15 here on the vial.
01:18And so we'll grab one of the corresponding note cards here.
01:20We'll get to 15.
01:22So it has the number here on the top,
01:23and then it has an illustration of what it is.
01:26More importantly, on the back,
01:27it gives a deep description about Black Currants
01:29and talks about how it shares with raspberries,
01:31the top ranked in the range of complex aromas
01:33that you find in red wine.
01:34But what's awesome is they give you the country
01:36and the region and the styles of wines that they make there
01:39where Black Currant is found most prevalent in those wines.
01:42Not only can you train your nose and your mind
01:46when you recognize Black Currant,
01:47which is a cool thing to be able to pick out,
01:49but then you can make the association
01:51where this scent or this aroma is found
01:54in different wines around the world.
01:55So let's try it again.
01:57So let's do aroma that's commonly found in white wine.
01:59This is number seven.
02:01That smells like a ripe cantaloupe.
02:04I don't know if these are natural scent,
02:05but I would tell you that they're really powerful.
02:08They're kind of an exaggeration of the typical smell
02:11that you might find in a wine.
02:12I'm okay with that.
02:13I think that you have to smell an abundance of it
02:15to really kind of get it and for it to sink in,
02:17for it to really be distinctive.
02:19We're gonna go through our flashcards.
02:20We're gonna pick number seven.
02:21We have seven here.
02:23So this is melon.
02:24The melon is mostly found in Australia Chardonnays
02:26and in sweet wines is what it's saying here
02:28and the Chardonnay grapes.
02:29You know, when I first started in wine,
02:30you know, it's hard, it's difficult.
02:31You know, on the outside looking in
02:33and you hear all these people talk about
02:34the different aromas and things
02:35that they're picking up in wine.
02:36I thought everybody was crazy.
02:38Only thing I could ever smell
02:39when I first started was alcohol.
02:40Generally, what I like to teach people is
02:42we have scent memories too.
02:44Like when you smell something,
02:45it brings you back to a certain place in your life.
02:47I always tell people, talk about what it reminds you of.
02:51When I was six or seven and I stayed a night
02:53at a friend's house and they had a hamster cage
02:56in his room.
02:57In the hamster cage, they have shaving of cedar.
02:58When I would smell that all the time,
02:59all I could think about was the hamster cage.
03:01But now I realized that it's an actual thing,
03:03it's cedar and it's a by-product of what you would find
03:05in oak that's used in wine.
03:07I smell the wine, I smell hamster cage
03:09and then that's the first thing that comes to mind.
03:12Then I can translate to that being like, oh, that's cedar.
03:15You can do this in other ways.
03:16Going to a farmer's market and picking up the produce,
03:18going to the grocery store, constantly smelling things.
03:21So if you don't want to look like a weirdo
03:23in the grocery store, following all the produce,
03:26I think this is a more concise way,
03:27a more direct way to honing your wine palate.
03:34So the kit comes with a master list of all 54 aromas
03:37and they're broken down by families.
03:39So you have fruity, floral,
03:41and the next category is vegetal and spicy.
03:43Next category is called animal.
03:45And the last is the roasted category.
03:47The fruity group, I think most people
03:49can wrap their head around that.
03:51You know, it's wine, it's somewhat fruity.
03:53It's made from grapes.
03:54Where it gets a little tricky is when you're into the animal
03:57and somewhat of the vegetal,
03:58when you're looking at leather, musk, mushroom.
04:01It makes you wonder, how are these things getting into wine?
04:03And I have to tell you, you can add things to wine,
04:06but you can't add this kind of stuff to wine.
04:08These are developed in the winemaking process.
04:10When we think about the wine world in general,
04:12it's broken down into three overarching categories.
04:15So we have primary, secondary, and tertiary.
04:17So the best way to explain those three categories
04:20is to open a bottle of wine.
04:21Why not?
04:23So this is a Sonoma County Pinot Noir.
04:25This is 2021.
04:27And I think this is a great way to show you
04:29and highlight some of the primary aromas.
04:33Generally, I put my nose in the glass.
04:35I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth.
04:37So you'll see my mouth is slightly cracked.
04:39And this is really kind of to open up your olfactory senses
04:42so you can take everything in.
04:4380% of taste is actually smell.
04:45So I'm swallowing the glass here
04:46is kind of to open up the wine.
04:47The wine has been in the bottle.
04:49You just want to expose it to oxygen a little bit.
04:51So aerating the wine is just getting more air into the wine,
04:53getting more lift in the wine, waking up the wine.
04:56All right, so right off the bat,
04:57I'm getting blackcurrant, blueberry, cherry.
05:01There's some thyme and violet.
05:03A lot of the primary aromas that you get
05:06come from the grape itself.
05:07Not all grapes are the same.
05:08They all have their own kind of characteristics
05:10and aromas and things that they give off.
05:12So when we're talking about primary,
05:14a lot of those aromas come from those specific grapes.
05:17You could say, all right,
05:18I'm going to have Sonoma Pinot Noir today.
05:20That's what we're going to try.
05:21And then you research through the kit
05:22and find out what aromas that are most commonly found
05:25in Pinot Noir.
05:26And you want to smell them and kind of run through
05:28and then see if you could taste those in the wine.
05:30So violet, you can smell it as soon as you take it off,
05:33the cap off.
05:35Every time I smell it, it smells like old lady perfume.
05:37It's like my grandma would wear this, you know?
05:40Sorry, grandma.
05:41You smell lovely.
05:42So this is violet.
05:43You can smell it.
05:44You can really smell it here in the glass.
05:45It's not overpowering.
05:47It's just like on the back end, like just kind of flowing up.
05:49So that's there.
05:51Black currant is there at the core, right?
05:53I picked that up right in the middle.
05:54And then this slightly herbaceous-ness
05:56that you get from it.
05:58And you get a little bit of that here.
06:01Smells so good.
06:02So those were the primary aromas
06:03that generally come from the grapes.
06:05Now we're going to move on to the secondary aromas
06:07that I can pick out in this wine.
06:09The key thing that jumps out is vanilla,
06:11which is, you know, oak.
06:12And secondary happens in the winery, right?
06:14Like what you do in the winemaking process.
06:16And so I think we've all seen grapes
06:18being harvested and picked.
06:19And then it goes into the fermentation process.
06:22And in fermentation, what you have is the yeast cells
06:24that have been introduced,
06:25eat up the sugars in the grapes,
06:27and turn it into alcohol.
06:28And then how you want to finish the wine,
06:30whether you want to put it in oak
06:32or you want to do stainless steel,
06:33all those things up until bottling.
06:35Can you tell how a wine was made
06:38based on secondary aromas?
06:40Yeah, you can.
06:41I mean, the big thing is,
06:42is this wine has spent some time in oak.
06:44That's where you're picking up, you know, this vanilla
06:46and kind of cinnamon thing that you're picking up.
06:48It gives you a little bit more insight
06:50on how the wine was made.
06:52So the aromas that you find in white wine
06:54are completely different than the aromas
06:55that you find in red wine.
06:57So we're going to go ahead and open this white wine,
06:58which is a Sonoma County Chardonnay from 2021.
07:03All right, primary notes here, citrus heavy.
07:06So it's citrus, lemon, lime, floral.
07:09There's lilacs, white flowers, all right?
07:11And then if we go into secondary,
07:13I would say this is a richness.
07:14Like it smells.
07:15It doesn't smell like popcorn butter.
07:17It's not butter,
07:17but this wine has gone through malolactic fermentation.
07:19So you can kind of smell that.
07:20It's like this concentration,
07:22a tad bit of vanilla, not overwhelming,
07:24but like it does smell somewhat sweet.
07:26Maybe I would just say snickerdoodle in a way.
07:29Yep, it's right there.
07:31It's more like flagrant butter.
07:34This is synthetic butter,
07:37but it smells like what's in here.
07:38So here's the butter card.
07:40The fresh butter note is frequently found in Chardonnays,
07:43a United States, California Chardonnay.
07:44So now we're going to move on to tertiary.
07:46In order to do that,
07:47we have to open another bottle of wine.
07:49All right, so the wine that we've chosen here is Borghi.
07:53This is from the Loire Valley.
07:54This is a red wine.
07:55This is 2018.
07:56So for tertiary,
07:58this actually happens in the aging process.
08:00And so we wanted to pick a wine
08:01that had a little bit of bottle maturity to it.
08:04All right, give this a pour.
08:10Off the top, it's like tobacco leaf,
08:13mushroom, damp florist floor.
08:15Get a little bit of black peppers as well.
08:20Even after it's been made, it's placed in a bottle.
08:22It's still evolving.
08:23The cork is porous.
08:24And so over time, it slowly, slowly lets oxygen seep in.
08:28The compounds and everything are interacting with that,
08:31and it's breaking down the wine.
08:32That's where a lot of the smells and aromas are developed
08:35is during the aging process.
08:36You know, a lot of people talk about
08:37the aging process being the magic.
08:39It's the magic that happens in wine.
08:41Older wines will definitely have more tertiary flavors
08:44and aromas.
08:45Using this kit,
08:46it kind of really will help you appreciate
08:48older wines as well.
08:49Yeah, so I think mushroom was one, right?
08:51There it is.
08:52You can feel the freshness of a fairy ring mushroom
08:55when aerating certain old vintages.
08:56They're saying that you pick up in older wines
08:58and not necessarily something that you get in regular wine.
09:01This is very valuable.
09:02Like, this is very valuable.
09:03I'm a firm believer in something like this.
09:05Especially being a sommelier,
09:07part of your training is all the great wines
09:09that you get to taste.
09:10And that's kind of really how you build your wine aroma
09:12and your taste memory palette.
09:13But if you had to do that on your own,
09:15not working at a restaurant,
09:16it can be really expensive.
09:18Like, quite expensive.
09:19And I think by, you know,
09:21investing or using $400 for this kit,
09:23it's one way, an alternative to be able to train
09:26without actually having the wines in front of you.
09:28And then when you get the wines in front of you,
09:29you can be more analytical
09:31about how you break them down and assess them.
09:33All right, so we have 54 aromas here,
09:35all commonly found in wine,
09:36but sometimes things go wrong in wine
09:39and there's another kit for that.
09:42This is called the Wine Faults Kit,
09:44made by the same company who did the previous kit.
09:46These are the 12 most common faults
09:48that you would find in a wine.
09:49On the surface level, what is a wine fault?
09:51It's a flaw in the wine,
09:54whether that's through the winemaking process
09:56or once it's been placed in the bottle.
09:58As a sommelier, this is helpful for quality control.
10:00Some people will drink F'd up wine
10:02because they don't know it's F'd up.
10:03By familiarizing yourself with these 12 faults,
10:06you'll let you know if you're drinking F'd up wine.
10:09F stands for fault.
10:10I'm gonna pick out a few here and run them down for you.
10:13The ones that I think are the most crucial
10:15for you to know about.
10:16This is number 12.
10:17This is cork.
10:17And I feel like this is the number one thing
10:19that you should be aware of.
10:20You don't wanna be drinking corked wine out there.
10:24Oh, that's it.
10:25That's it right there.
10:27Smells like wet newspaper, an attic,
10:30and this is what you don't want in your wine.
10:32This is called TCA.
10:34It's when natural fungi interacts with chemicals,
10:37mainly cleaning supplies, and in effect, the cork.
10:39The bad part is that it can get into barrels.
10:43It can get into lots of your lines
10:45or pump lines and stuff like that.
10:47You wanna be able to recognize this
10:48because this is one of the major flaw in wines,
10:50and you shouldn't be drinking wine
10:51that tastes like wet cardboard.
10:53Next up, we have number 10,
10:55and it's somewhat controversial.
10:56It's labeled as horse.
10:58I think it even goes on to a little bit more description,
11:01horse sweat.
11:01Okay, all right.
11:04That is exactly what this smells like.
11:06A lot of people call it Brett, for short, for Brettanomyces.
11:10When I talk about controversial,
11:11it's one of those things is,
11:13is it really a fault if people enjoy it, right?
11:16Like, so I like a little Brett in my wine.
11:20I sound a little weird here.
11:21You know, I think a little bit can add, you know,
11:23layers of complexity to the wine
11:25and another nuance to the wine,
11:27but too much of it, to me, overpowers the wine,
11:30and it's not fun to drink at all
11:31because it feels like you're drinking
11:34a barnyard full of horses.
11:36This is generally a result of, you know,
11:38what people like to say, dirty winemaking,
11:39just your winery's not clean.
11:41So wine has been made for thousands of years,
11:44and it's steeped on tradition.
11:45So a lot of cleaning and those kind of things,
11:48and, you know, we're talking about old cellars
11:50and those types of things where, you know,
11:51some of them can't be cleaned as well as an ER would be.
11:55But like I said, a little bit of Brett, for me,
11:57goes a long way in small doses.
11:59And number one, so this is Vegetal.
12:02This is something that's easily recognizable in wine,
12:04and I think that you should be able to pick it out
12:06and understand what it means.
12:07So when we open this up here.
12:10Yeah, so this smells like canned asparagus to me,
12:14or green bell pepper.
12:16A lot of times, the greenness and the vegetal that you get
12:18is really a sign of a particular grape varietal.
12:22So particular grape varietals have higher parazines,
12:25if you will, which is the more clinical name in them.
12:29You're gonna get a lot more of that vegetal quality.
12:31If the wine is picked and it's unripe or ripens too fast,
12:35you tend to get a lot more of this characteristic in a wine.
12:38And so I think some people may not see it as a fault,
12:42really, but when it's egregious, it becomes a fault.
12:45Trust me.
12:46When you say vegetal, that kind of tends to be a fault.
12:48When you say green pepper and those kinds of things,
12:51it becomes less of a fault
12:52and more of an attribute of the wine.
12:54Knowing the faults is crucial,
12:55and as a professional, it's a must-know.
12:58Looking at this thing as a professional,
13:00being able to connect aromas to certain wines
13:03in certain regions is invaluable.
13:04So if you're trying to get into wine,
13:06I think this just makes it fun.
13:07If you want to appreciate wine more,
13:09this tool helps right off the rip.
13:12Do you want to do a test?
13:13Do you want to do a lightning test?
13:14Pick a random one, and I'll see if you get it right.
13:16Yep.
13:17Andre Mack, lightning round test.
13:18All right, let's see.
13:22This is peppermint.
13:23What number?
13:2342.
13:2442 is?
13:26Whoa.
13:27Motherfucker.