You’re at a dinner party when some know-it-all sticks his nose into a wine glass and pronounces: “Oh, my! I detect blackberry, charcoal, coffee, pear, maple, upholstery and underripe cantaloupe. That’s quite a bouquet.”
Yes, Chauncey, it certainly is. Serious oenophiles really can smell an impressive variety of notes in a wine, but it’s not as mysterious as it may seem. Sommelier Jill Aboussie will break it down in a single, simple class at Whole Foods Market in Brentwood on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. (Cost is $30. Click here to see the store’s calendar.)
Aboussie will comb the aisles of the grocery store for red and green apples, grapefruit, cinnamon, coffee, chocolate, figs, mangos, apricots, peaches, oranges, lemons, limes, lemongrass, prunes, raisins, and other foods. (She’s also bringing along tobacco and leather, representative of the nonedible smells in wine.) Students in the class will smell the foods, and then smell the wines said to contain similar aromas.
Can anybody do it? “The more you build your smell vocabulary, the easier it gets,” Aboussie said. “The first time a person starts to really think about wine, to concentrate on all the different aspects and essences, it can get a little overwhelming. So the approach I take is to ask them what they smell. But there are no right answers. Everyone experiences things differently. For instance, with the big reds, everybody smells fruits. But the secondary aromas make you think a little deeper.”
St. Louis native Aboussie has just returned to her old (grape) stomping grounds from jobs at Etude Wines and Lewis Cellars in Napa Valley. She currently consults on wines for Aya Sofia in South City.
– Byron Kerman
This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2009.