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Smells, words & memories

Tasting is an act of transmutation of aromas and flavours into measured and unspoken language.

We receive a cocktail of raw chemical and microbiological elements in liquid form, we perceive them (as data) in a way that is unique to our particular training and individual consciousness, we react accordingly, and we formulate an assessment based on a mixture of subjective feeling and objective consideration (with numerous other external and internal influences in play) which we proceed to shape into words. In certain cases, an objectifying tendency may dominate whereas in others our taste may largely be determined by emotional or visceral responses.

Our sense of taste is further influenced by our cultural experience and our social conditioning which provides us with the language (and reservoir of associative comparison), which we need to convert perceptions and memories into communicable form.

When one considers that wine is a complex liaison of chemical transformations and microbiological marvels and how those of us who taste and perceive wine are changing constantly due the firing of neurons and realignment of neural pathways, it is surprising that we find the same taste in a wine from hour-to-hour let alone day to day.

Certain chemical compounds present in specific wines (and other drinks and foods) tend to trigger certain groups of common descriptors. This common ground lies in a wider recognition of the more pungent aromatics peculiar to a certain style of wine or grape variety, although how we describe the wine will ultimately depend on our experience of what we have exposed to and smelled and tasted previously.

For example, the volatile thiol 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one – or 4-MMP for short – is one of the aromatic compounds present in wines made from Sauvignon Blanc. The perceived taste spectrum for this grape varies between “green” (vegetative, grassy, herbaceous, asparagus, green pepper, capsicum, tomato leaf) at the one end to “tropical” (guava, grapefruit and passion fruit) with gooseberry and blackcurrant sitting somewhere in the middle. Which descriptor we end up using will naturally depend on the wine itself – as not all Sauvignons taste the same – but often we may end up selecting a group of words across the range to convey an essential impression of “Sauvignon-ess”. Perhaps this is as much to say that the more one thinks about the words one uses in the interests of conveying precise flavour-perceptions, the more words one ends up using.

It is easier to find equivalent descriptors for a grape variety such as Sauvignon which exhibits such dominant primary thiol-intense aromatics. When it comes to describing our perceptions of the effects of  complexing secondary aromas and flavours in a wine marked by, say, aldehyde notes (flor yeast x oxidation) we may find it trickier to summon the right words.

The sensory threshold for acetaldehyde ranges from 100-125 mg/l. Immediately after fermentation, wines generally have acetaldehyde levels below 75 mg/l. However, above 125 mg/l acetaldehyde can impart odours described sometimes as  ‘bruised apples’, ‘stuck-ferment’ character or ‘sherry’ and ‘nut-like’ notes. Other descriptions include “fermenting marula”; “papaya” (which seems to be a positive) or underripe avocado. Whether it is the actual quantity of acetaldehyde or the way it presents in a particular wine, putting sherry and papaya in the same family of descriptors seems an odd juxtaposition. Equally, we can’t assert that one description is more accurate than another since we are conditioned to find words that best reflect our experience and there is no objective standard for these things.

Sotolon, a butenolide lactone and an extremely potent aroma compound that one finds particularly in the Vin Jaune wines of Jura, exhibits a typical smell of fenugreek or curry powder at high concentrations and maple syrup, caramel, or burnt sugar at lower ones. How you probably describe the wines depends on the intensity of the aromas. If you have never smelled fenugreek or curry powder in your life, you can only make the nearest comparison. Then it becomes a matter of “the smell of this wine makes me think of…”What we taste as flavour is linked to what we smell. Wines are, however, considerably more complex than the sum total presence of those aromatic compounds which contribute to our perception of them. Our feeling about a wine extends beyond smells. A wine possesses colour (and that alone prompts various associations for the perceiver), it may also possess textural properties that unfold and coat the palate. The wine itself will change as well as its chemical composition will be affected by exposure to oxygen and temperature change not to mention reacting to the saliva in our mouths.

When one considers that wine is a complex liaison of chemical transformations and microbiological marvels and how those of us who taste and perceive wine are changing constantly due the firing of neurons and realignment of neural pathways, it is surprising that we find the same taste in a wine from hour-to-hour let alone day to day.  Into the tasting mixer goes the intrinsic properties of the wines themselves, those sensations, for instance, of ripeness, lees ageing, the impact of the vessel on the flavour of the wine, aromas conferred by malolactic fermentation, carbonic maceration, reduction, or oxidation. Notwithstanding the impressions given by terroir transmission. To confine the description of a wine to a simple single equivalence limited by our personal and cultural experience, is hardly do it justice, but then even the most lucid or lyrical tasting notes are partial rather than definitive.

The act of summoning up experience itself is an imaginative leap. The aromas of wine may remind us of something pleasant or quite the opposite. Since we are more prone to explore likeable impressions more deeply, the pleasure centres of the brain are likely to be stimulated more intensely, and perhaps (I am speculating here), we forge a link between our favourite things.

The best wine smells may invite appealing memories. A soft, almost moist ocean breeze blowing through machair flowers conjuring salty sweet mellowing scents is often conjured when I sniff a natural wine made from Muscat. The sun-warmed herbs and plants of the Mediterranean garrigue are imprinted onto certain wines from the Languedoc or Provence. In my mind’s eye. The forest –  a time and a place of earthy smells, leaf mulch, and pine scent intermingled with decay and renewal is sometimes evoked when I put my nose into a Bordeaux of a certain age.

In a strange metaphorical reversal, when I smell things that I love in nature, I equate them to wine. Not necessarily a specific wine, but the headiness that one associates with wine aromas. It is the best form of intoxication when you lose yourself in a world of smell which has no language other than itself. We become more of a receptor than analytic sniffer. And that’s a charm.