The 54-Aroma Kit Sommeliers Use to Train Their Noses

So this is a wine aroma kit.

This contains 54 vials of scents commonly found in wine.

Hey, I'm Sommelier Andre Hueston Mack,

and today I'm gonna show you how sommeliers use this kit

to hone their sense of smell.

[upbeat music]

So the ability to recognize aroma is very important

for a sommelier

to communicate concisely to guess what they're getting,

what they should be getting,

and answer any questions or inquiries that they might have.

I mean, I think a lot of people try to call [beep]

on the sommeliers and the wine industry about what flavors

and things that they smell,

aromas that they smell in wine.

It's not a trick.

It's a true thing,

and so recognizing and picking up on these aromas in wine

are key to your job.

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So what are we looking at here?

So this is a kit. It has a name.

It's called Le Nez du Vin,

so the nose of wine.

Here are the vials.

There's 54 of them.

They're all labeled by number.

So you can taste them blind,

pull them out here,

and then you can go here to the flashcard set

to the corresponding number,

and it'll tell you what the scent is.

I'ma give you a quick run through

and let you know how it works, right?

So we'll go ahead and pull a scent from over here.

So this is 15, so I'll go ahead and give it a whiff.

These are pretty powerful.

You don't wanna get so close to your nose

that maybe you touch your nose

or you get it stuck there

because you'll be breathing this stuff in

for the better part of the day.

This is blackcurrant.

That's what I believe it is.

It says 15 here on the vial,

and so we'll grab one of the corresponding note cards here.

We'll get to 15.

So it has the number here on the top,

and then it has an illustration of what it is.

More importantly, on the back,

it gives a deep description about blackcurrants,

and talks about how it shares with raspberries the top rank

in the range of complex aromas that you find in red wine.

But what's awesome is they give you the country

and the region,

and the styles of wines that they make there

where blackcurrant is found most prevalent in those wines.

Not only can you train your nose

and your mind when you recognize blackcurrant,

which is a cool thing to be able to pick out,

but then you can make the association where this scent

or this aroma is found in different wines around the world.

So let's try it again.

Let's do an aroma that's commonly found in white wine.

This is number seven.

That smells like a ripe cantaloupe.

I don't know if these are natural scent,

but I would tell you that they're really powerful.

They're kind of an exaggeration of the typical smell

that you might find in a wine.

I'm okay with that.

I think that you have to smell an abundance of it

to really kind of get it,

and for it to sink in,

for it to really be distinctive.

We're gonna go through our flashcards.

We're gonna pick number seven.

We have seven here.

So this is melon.

The melon is mostly found in Australian chardonnays

and in sweet wines.

It's what it's saying here,

and the chardonnay grapes.

You know, when I first started in wine,

you know, it's hard.

It's difficult, you know?

On the outside looking in

and you hear all these people talk

about the different aromas

and things that they're picking up in wine,

I thought everybody was crazy.

Only thing I could ever smell

when I first started was alcohol.

Generally what I like to teach people

is we have scent memories too.

Like, when you smell something,

it brings you back to a certain place in your life.

I always tell people,

Talk about what it reminds you of.

When I was six or seven

and I stayed a night at a friend's house

and they had a hamster cage in his room,

in a hamster cage, they have shaving of cedar.

When I smell that all the time,

all I could think about was the hamster cage.

But now, I realize that it's an actual thing.

It's cedar, and it's a byproduct

of what you would find in oak

that's used in wine.

I smell a wine, I smell hamster cage,

and then that's when it comes,

first thing that comes to mind.

Then, I can translate to that,

being like Oh, that's cedar.

You can do this in other ways.

Going to a farmer's market

and picking up the produce,

going to the grocery store,

constantly smelling things.

So if you don't wanna look like a weirdo

in the grocery store, fondling all the produce,

I think this is a more concise way,

a more direct way to honing your wine palate.

[upbeat music]

So the kit comes with a master list of all 54 aromas,

and they're broken down by families.

So you have fruity, floral,

and the next category is vegetal and spicy,

next category is called animal,

and the last is the roasted category.

The fruity group, I think most people

can wrap their head around that.

You know, it's wine.

It's somewhat fruity.

It's made from grapes.

Where it gets a little tricky is when you're into the animal

and somewhat of the vegetal.

When you're looking at leather, musk, mushroom,

it makes you wonder,

how are these things getting into the wine?

And I have to tell you,

you can add things to wine,

but you can't add this kind of stuff to wine.

These are developed in the winemaking process.

When we think about the wine world in general,

it's broken down into three overarching categories.

So we have primary, secondary, and tertiary.

So the best way to explain those three categories

is to open a bottle of wine.

Why not?

[upbeat music]

So this is a Sonoma County pinot noir.

This is 2021, and I think this is a great way to show you

and highlight some of the primary aromas.

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Generally I put my nose in the glass.

I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth,

so you'll see my mouth is slightly cracked,

and this is really kinda to open up your olfactory senses,

so you can take everything in.

80% of taste is actually smell.

So I'm swirling the glass here,

just kinda to open up the wine.

The wine has been in the bottle.

You just wanna expose it to oxygen a little bit.

So aerating the wine is just getting more air

into the wine,

getting more lift in the wine, waking up the wine.

Alright, so right off the bat,

I'm getting blackcurrant,

blueberry, cherry,

there's some thyme and violet.

A lot of the primary aromas

that you get come from the grape itself.

Not all grapes are the same.

They all have their own kind of characteristics and aromas

and things that they give off.

So when we're talking about primary,

a lot of those aromas come from those specific grapes.

You could say,

All right, I'm gonna have Sonoma pinot noir today.

That's what we're gonna try,

and then you research through the kit

and find out what aromas

that are most commonly found in pinot noir,

and you wanna smell them,

and kind of run through,

and then see if you could taste those in the wine.

So violet, you can smell it as soon as you take it off,

the cap off.

Every time I smell it, it smells like old lady perfume.

It's like my Grandma would wear this, you know?

Sorry, Grandma, you smell lovely.

So this is violet.

You can smell it.

You can really smell it here in the glass.

It's not overpowering.

It's just like on the back end,

like just kind of flowing up.

So that's there.

Blackcurrant is there at the core, right?

I picked that up right in the middle.

And then this slightly herbaceousness

that you get from it,

and you get a little bit of that here.

It smells so good.

So those were the primary aromas

that generally come from the grapes.

Now, we're gonna move on to the secondary aromas

that I can pick out in this wine.

The key thing that jumps out is vanilla,

which is, you know, oak,

and secondary happens in the winery, right?

Like, what you do in the winemaking process.

And so I think we've all seen grapes being harvested

and picked,

and then it goes into the fermentation process,

and in fermentation,

what you have is the yeast cells that have been introduced,

eat up the sugars in the grapes,

and turn it into alcohol,

and then how you want to finish the wine,

whether you wanna put it in oak

or you wanna do stainless steel,

all those things up until bottling.

Can you tell how a wine was made

based on secondary aromas?

Yeah, you can.

I mean, the big thing

is this wine has spent some time in oak.

That's where you're picking up, you know,

this vanilla

and kind of cinnamon thing that you're picking up.

It gives you a little bit more insight

on how the wine was made.

So the aromas that you'd find in white wine

are completely different than the aromas

that you'd find in red wine.

So we're gonna go ahead and open this white wine,

which is a Sonoma County chardonnay from 2021.

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Alright, primary notes here.

Citrus heavy, so it's citrus, lemon, lime, floral,

there's lilacs,

white flowers.

Alright, and then if we go into secondary,

I would say there's a richness.

Like, it smells,

it doesn't smell like popcorn butter,

it's not butter,

but this wine has gone through malolactic fermentation,

so you can kind of smell that.

It's like this concentration,

a tad bit of vanilla,

not overwhelming,

but, like, it does smell somewhat sweet.

Maybe I would just say snickerdoodle in a way.

Yep, it's right there.

It's more like fragrant butter.

This is synthetic butter,

but it smells like what's in here.

So here's the butter card.

The fresh butter note is frequently found in chardonnays,

a United States, California chardonnay.

So now, we're gonna move on to tertiary.

In order to do that, we have to open another bottle of wine.

Alright, so the wine that we've chosen here is Bourgueil.

This is from the Loire Valley.

This is a red wine.

This is 2018.

So for tertiary, this actually happens in the aging process,

and so we wanted to pick a wine

that had a little bit of bottle maturity to it.

All right.

[bottle clinking]

Give this a pour.

[upbeat music] [wine trickling]

Off the top, it's like tobacco leaf,

mushroom, damp forest floor.

Get a little bit of black pepper as well.

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Even after it's been made,

it's placed in a bottle,

it's still evolving.

A cork is porous,

and so over time,

it slowly, slowly lets oxygen seep in.

The compounds and everything are interacting with that,

and it's breaking down the wine.

That's where a lot of the smells

and aromas are developed,

is during the aging process.

You know, a lot of people talk

about the aging process being the magic.

It's the magic that happens in wine.

Older wines will definitely have more tertiary flavors

and aromas.

Using this kit, it kind of really will help you

appreciate older wines as well.

Yeah, so I think mushroom was one, right?

There it is.

You can feel the freshness

of a fairy-ring mushroom when aerating certain old vintages.

They're saying that you pick up in older wines,

and not necessarily something that you get in regular wine.

This is very valuable.

Like, this is very valuable.

I'm a firm believer in something like this.

Especially being a sommelier, part of your training

is all the great wines that you get to taste,

and that's kind of really how you build your wine aroma

and your taste memory palate.

But if you had to do that on your own,

not working at a restaurant,

it can be really expensive.

Like, quite expensive.

And I think by, you know,

investing or using $400 for this kit, it's one way,

an alternative,

to be able to train without actually having the wines

in front of you.

And then when you get the wines in front of you,

you can be more analytical

about how you break them down and assess them.

Alright, so we have 54 aromas here,

all commonly found in wine,

but sometimes things go wrong in wine,

and there's another kit for that.

This is called the Wine Faults Kit,

made by the same company do the previous kit.

These are the 12 most common faults

that you would find in a wine.

On the surface level, what is a wine fault?

It's a flaw in the wine,

whether that's through the winemaking process,

or once it's been placed in the bottle.

As a sommelier, this is helpful for quality control.

Some people will drink f-ed up wine

because they don't know it's f-ed up.

By familiarizing yourself with these 12 faults,

you'll let you know if you're drinking f-ed up wine

F stands for fault.

I'm gonna pick out a few here and run them down for you,

the ones that I think are the most crucial for you

to know about.

This is number 12.

This is cork,

and I feel like this is the number one thing

that you should be aware of.

You don't wanna be drinking corked wine out there.

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Oh, that's it.

That's it right there.

Smells like wet newspaper, an attic,

and this is what you don't want in your wine.

This is called TCA.

It's when natural fungi interacts with chemicals,

mainly cleaning supplies,

and in effect, the cork.

The bad part is that it could get into barrels,

it can get into lots of your lines or pump lines,

and stuff like that.

You wanna be able to recognize this

because this is one of the major flaw in wines,

and you shouldn't be drinking wine

that tastes like wet cardboard.

Next up, we have number 10, and it's somewhat controversial.

It's just labeled as horse.

I think it even goes on to a little bit more description,

horse sweat.

Okay, all right.

That is exactly what this smells like.

A lot of people call it Brett,

short for Brettanomyces.

When I talk about controversial,

it's one of those things is,

is it really a fault if people enjoy it?

Right, like so I like a little Brett in my wine.

I sound a little weird here.

You know, I think a little bit can add, you know, layers

of complexity to the wine,

and another nuance to the wine,

but too much of it, to me, overpowers the wine,

and it's not fun to drink at all

because it feels like you're drinking

a barnyard full of horses.

This is generally a result of, you know,

what people like to say dirty winemaking.

Just your winery is not clean.

So wine has been made for thousands of years,

and it's steeped on tradition,

so a lot of cleaning and those kind of things,

and you know, we're talking about old cellars,

and those types of things where, you know,

some of them can't be cleaned as well as an ER would be.

But like I said,

a little bit of Brett for me goes a long way

in small doses.

And number one, so this is vegetal.

This is something that's easily recognizable in wine,

and I think that you should be able to pick it out

and understand what it means.

So when we open this up here,

yeah, so it just smell like canned asparagus to me,

or a green bell pepper.

A lot of times,

the greenness and the vegetal that you get

is really a sign of a particular grape varietal.

So particular grape varietals have higher pyrazines,

if you will,

which is the more clinical name, in them.

You're gonna get a lot more of that vegetal quality.

If the wine is picked and it's unripe

or ripens too fast,

you tend to get a lot more of this characteristic in a wine.

And so I think some people may not see it as a fault really,

but when it's egregious,

it becomes a fault, trust me.

When you say vegetal,

that kind of tends to be a fault.

When you say green pepper

and those kind of things,

it becomes less of a fault

and more of an attribute of the wine.

Knowing the faults is crucial,

and as a professional, it's a must-know.

Looking at this thing as a professional,

being able to connect the aromas

to certain wines and certain regions,

it's invaluable.

So if you're trying to get into wine,

I think this just makes it fun.

If you wanna appreciate wine more,

this tool helps right off the rip.

[upbeat music]

[Cameraperson] Do you wanna do a test?

Do you wanna do a lightning test?

Pick a random one and I'll see if you get it right.

Yeah.

[Cameraperson] Andre Mack, lightning round test.

Alright, let's see.

[upbeat music]

Ah, this is peppermint.

What number? 42.

42 is clove.

[beep] .

[Andre laughing]