Becoming a great wine taster

Winter can be long in our province but to make the most of it we can begin new activities, take courses or try to develop new skills. As people get more involved with wine, their interest grows and at the same time their thirst for knowledge. One wine topic that seems to become very popular is how to be a better taster and recognize the different aromas and flavours in wine.

Making sense of smell

Some wine professional will say that the sense of smell is overrated and that we don't drink wine with our nose but our mouth. Although I respect their opinion, I don't agree, try to enjoy wine when you have a cold, you won't taste much of anything. Developing our nose is a very important step in wine tasting skills.

Unfortunately, in the past recent centuries we have not had to use our sense of smell to hunt for our food. The sense of smell became kind of lazy and under developed. Interestingly enough, we only have four genes for our sense of vision but one thousands for our sense of smell. The problem, we live in a world that everything goes so fast that we do not stop to smell the roses. Which is actually the first key step to develop your nose -- taking the moment to smell the things that surrounds us, especially in the kitchen and the garden. Smelling flowers, grass, fruits and vegetables (cooked and raw), bread, spices, tobacco, etc. even odd aromas like gasoline or vinegar. All these will help you be more accurate when describing wine. Our sense of smell is directly connected to the area of our brain responsible for memories and emotions. This fact probably explains why certain smells bring back experiences and sweet times for our past. Personally, when I smell strawberries and rhubarb in a red wine, I think of my mother's rhubarb and strawberry pie.

The important change to make is to stop and take the time to smell stuff around us and develop your olfactive memory. It basically just like your personal computer, you have great software that are not used. Great places to develop your sense of smells are supermarket and farmers market; take the time to smell the food you buy. We can be good at all the aromas; I cook a lot so most aromas I can detect. Unfortunately, my knowledge of flowers is not great, flowers is my weak spot. So, in the summer time or at flower shops, I do my best to nose some flowers and try to remember their names.

A tasting group

The best way to learn is to sample a lot of wine, and when I mean a lot, a really mean a ton of wines. A good way to do this is to attend wine events like wine Festivals, seminars and other related activities. But probably the best way is to have your own tasting group. This way you can focus your energy on improving you weakness and working on you knowledge of wine that you might not be familiar. The most common mistake people do is to drink the same type of wine all the time. Nothing wrong with drinking what you like but makes it challenging to expand you tasting skills. With a group you can select different theme every time you meet, and another benefit of a tasting group is the cost-sharing factor that allows us to sample a lot more wine than on our own budget.

Tools to develop your nose

You can now find games or kits that have products to help you develop your nose like Le Nez du Vin (about 500 dollars), an aroma kit with around 50 aromas that can help you recognize wine aromas. Another one that I recently found for less money with less aromas is called Step by step Introduction to wine appreciation for wine lovers, you can purchase a white wine kit and a red wine kit for about 50 dollars each (10 aromas each).

Good luck and have fund developing your sense of smell.

Weekly wine picks:

#8422443001208 - Castano Monastrell -Spain ($15.79)

#5601920113952 - Vinzelo -Portugal ($11.49)

#7798039590199 - Trivento Tribu Viognier -Argentina ($10.79)