Just over seven years ago I passed the Master Sommelier exam. Many people helped me in that endeavor, and after passing I made a conscious effort to contribute to others’ pursuits to become better wine professionals—whether through certification or personal journey.
My first realization in teaching the art of tasting was the need to objectify elements that could be consistently identified and easily taught… okay, maybe not so easily. I found that many of the heuristics that I relied on were all too individual, uniquely experiential, and frustratingly vague. How could I be a good teacher if I couldn't tell someone exactly where he or she went wrong and put my finger on how to achieve more consistent success?
I have always been prone to analogy—for better or for worse—and I like to think of the role of the sommelier like that of a doctor. We have imperfect information about a field more complex than we'd like to admit, and our role is to communicate to terrified customers who have an even more anecdotal concept of the topic at hand. We learned from our mentors what worked for them, regardless of the rigor of the methodology that led them to these realizations. Maybe Syrah makes your eyes water; maybe Sangiovese tannins attach to the roof of your mouth; maybe Grenache tastes like alluvial stones; but if all else fails, try leeches. Yes, leeches always seem to do the trick!
Clearly it was time to evolve.
This may not be obvious to the newest generation of wine professionals, but a decade ago there were few objective terms we used to classify a wine. When I passed the MS exam I had no idea what a pyrazine was and when I gave my first tasting lecture on identifying them in 2009 at the Rudd Roundtable, there were more than a few jokes—albeit lovingly—made at my expense. The next year we talked of terpenes, the year after thiols. This year it was phenols, and the jokes continue. But ultimately, for many people, this approach resonates! Yes, if you use the terms incorrectly and confuse stem inclusion for pyrazines, you can look a little silly in attempting such precise terminology. But once you master identifying a host of objective elements in wine, you can become an impressively consistent blind taster.
Shifting paradigms never comes without assured danger. In our case, the worst of these present themselves when we confuse the prose of wine tasting with the poetry of sales. We have no more business approaching the table with talk of pyrazines and thiols than a medic should open their bedside dialog suggesting the risk of cerebral infarction. What the patient wants to know is, "Am I going to live?" and what the customer wants to know is, “Will I like it?”
But just as is the case with the vocation of my endless analogy, this is no excuse for our profession not to develop precise jargon. We have to learn to use pedagogical terms accurately and draw upon these concepts to describe wine in a manner that resonates with our guests.
Before we progress to an exploration of technical wine terminology and its even more important analog of poetic descriptions, I'd like to make a final medical equivalence: our understanding of the objective world is constantly evolving. The basic assumption of science and medicine is that all knowledge is tentative. The chemical compounds presented in the below charts are as we understand today (along with my best correlation to the evocative language we can use to describe them). Ten years from now we will have undoubtedly furthered our grasp on the chemical causes and effective smells we encounter, but that shouldn't stop us from exploring the potential realities that underlie the complex perceptions that define our field.
Geoff Kruth, MSGuildSomm.com
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The purpose of each of the charts below is to link the chemical causes of distinctive wine aromas to the potential descriptions we can use to describe these elements. Each class of aromatic compound is explained in more detail in our Science of Tasting Expanded Guide. While this guide is only available for GuildSomm website members, we feel it should be essential reading for any wine professional.
Special thanks to Madeline Puckette from Winefolly.com for working with us on these graphics.
Fruit, flower, and herb:
Earth:
Earthy aromas are perhaps the most complex to define in origin. They can be the result of microbial activity (often described as organic earth) as well as complex reduced sulfur compounds (often described as inorganic or mineral). It was once assumed that earthy flavors made their way from the soil through the grapevine into the grape but modern science gives us a different—yet admittedly complex—picture.
Spice:
The spice of wine can come from both varietal fruit character as well as the influence of winemaking and oak aging. Distinguishing between the two can be an important factor in blind tasting.
The charts and subsequent notes presented here do not represent an endpoint, but rather an ongoing dialogue. They are by no means exhaustive and we can imagine more charts in the future linking other classes of compounds to potential descriptions. This dialogue and our understanding thereof will continue to improve, and sommeliers can become better professionals if we expanded upon both the poetry and prose of wine-tasting.
awesome read!
Good , very good information
This is the best thing I've read all year.
For sure! Sauerkraut is high in both ethyl acetate (VA) and lactic bacteria. In the case of the first, it probably won't get better; if the wine is very young, the second is likely to improve with a bit of time in bottle.
Mendoza Petit Verdot, that has seen 16 mo. in oak.