When I studied in France at the Burgundy School of Business, I got to take a class called “Sensorial Analysis and Appreciation.” It was the class in which I learned that most languages have words for tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, etc.), but not for smells. There are a few languages of small hunter-gatherer communities in which there are common words dedicated to some of the thousands of volatile compounds that comprise scents…but most languages, like English, just refer to common sources for the scents, like roses, or metaphors, like “it smells like my grandmother’s soap.”

I learned that the sensorial parts of our brains are not inherently connected to the linguistic parts, so without a linguistic structure to help us out, it’s pretty difficult for most of us to quickly put words to scents, and it usually takes a lot of practice to speed up the process.

To help you and your guests quickly put words to what you’re smelling and tasting to discuss together in your Wineluck Club events, I’ve created a downloadable guide to the scents and flavors in wine, so that you’ll have all of those fancy wine tasting descriptors right at hand. Use this reference sheet just like might use a wine aroma wheel…without having to turn it around and around to try to read the words while tasting.