If you’ve ever read a wine tasting note, you’ve no doubt encountered an extensive list of fruits, spices and other micellaneous items that are used to explain a wine. It’s common to see things like “this wine exhibits notes of green apple and lemon followed by delicate minerality and a hint of jasmine.” But what does this mean? And where will you find these notes. These tasting notes are often used to describe wine aromas, or what you smell in the wine glass. What you discover in the glass tells you a lot about the wine itself. But what exactly are wine aromas? In this wine guide, we dive into everything you need to know.
What are wine aromas?
Wine aromas are what you can smell when you taste wine. If you’ve ever been to a wine tasting, you know how important sniffing the wine is to the wine-tasting experience. This is where you discover a lot of key information about the wine, and this comes from the smell of the wine aka the wine aromas.
The smell of the wine comes from the alcohol evaporating into the air, and that’s about as scientific as I go. Through this smell, you can pick up an important element of the flavour of a wine. This includes smelling fruit vs savoury smells or vanilla.
Wine aromas are a crucial part of the tasting experience. Whilst you do find some flavours in the palate of a wine (or the taste) the smell of the wine gives you much more of the notes of the wine. So without smelling the wine, the tasting of the wine itself isn’t complete.
The three types of wine aromas
Now wine aromas can be anything from fruity notes to savoury and even odd notes like gasoline or forest floor. And these are placed into three categories that help tell you a lot about the wine you are sipping. So let’s dive into the three types.
Primary aromas
If you’re able to pick out some fruit, herb or floral smells in a bottle of wine you are smelling the primary aromas in your wine.
Primary aromas come from the grapes themselves. These smells come from a variety of wine which offers a unique set of aromas when it is made into wine. They are incredibly fragrant and are also often distinctive to the grape variety, including notes of fresh fruit, herb and floral.
Commonly primary aromas are associated with young and vibrant wines. As the wine becomes older, the primary aromas lessen due to the chemical reactions happening in the bottle. The wine then develops new smells. So generally the younger the wine, the more prominent the primary aromas are.
Examples of these aromas include:
- floral notes (jasmine, acacia, hawthorn, carnation, honeysuckle, hyacinth, orange blossom, rose, lilac, etc.)
- fruity notes (blackcurrant, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, apple, peach, pear, apricot, citrus, lemon, quince, pineapple, mango, lychee, etc.)
- Herbaceous notes (asparagus, tomato leaf, lemongrass, mint, eucalyptus)
- mineral notes (iodine, chalk, flint)
- Spices (pepper, nutmeg or cloves)
Secondary aromas
The secondary aromas come from fermentation and reflect the decisions that the winemaker makes to create that bottle of wine. One of the most common impacts on the secondary wine aromas is the choice to use barrels to age the wine or not. Whether or not a winemaker chooses to use oak barrels in their winemaking really impacts the flavour of a wine. Think unoaked Chardonnay versus oaked Chardonnay. The wood influences the flavour and aroma of the wine greatly. You’ll also find a lot of differences depending on the type of wood used, whether the barrel has been used before and how old they are.
Some examples of secondary aromas include buttery, toasty, vanilla, cedar, tobacco, nutty, bread, coconut, coffee or biscuit
Tertiary aromas
The tertiary aromas are all about the age of the wine. Whilst this can come from ageing in oak barrels, more often it is used to describe the smells that come from wine as it ages in the bottle. The more aged the wine, the more the aromatics in the wine will change, taking on new flavours to discover. As wine ages, these notes become more prominent than the primary aromas.
Here are some of the tertiary aromas you might find:
- In red wines, fresh ripe fruit starts to transform into stewed or dried fruit. You may also get tertiary aromas of tobacco, earth and mushroom.
- White wines start to develop dried apricot, orange marmalade and sometimes notes of almonds and candied fruit. Other tertiary notes include nutty aromas as well as complex spice components like nutmeg, ginger and petrol.
In summary: What are wine aromas?
So now that you know what wine aromas are and the different types from this wine guide, the best thing you can do is to start exploring. As you taste wine, give it a bit of a whiff, and see what you can find. The best way to learn the different aromas is to experience them, so challenging yourself to find the notes in the wine that are described in the tasting notes is a great place to start. And don’t worry if you don’t get them right away, it can take time and practice. The great thing about the different categories of wine aromas is that they help tell you a bit about the wine. In a young wine you’ll expect to find more primary aromas, and in an oaked wine you’ll find secondary. Knowing these hints will help you unpack what you find in your glass.