Wine Doesn't Smell Like Wine

Not long ago, I did some tasting with some good friends. We were discussing the smells and the tastes in the wines, nothing too serious or over the top. One of my friends, a free-thinker, stopped us, and suggested that the wine just smells like wine. No one had an answer for him, until now.
Just last week we had a two day sensory analysis unit here at Cheese School. Our professor had prepared twenty six "standard" aromas that we all had to identify. These standards were compounds mixed into a base wine, or simply the smelly thing itself, like chunks of butter, caramel, or bubble gum. It didn't take long for us to figure out what all this stuff was: asparagus juice, black pepper, nutmeg, olive, honey, lemon, raspberry, etc...
Trying to guess smells can dislodge lots of memories. You have to close your eyes, picture what the smell reminds you of, and then unpack the memory to isolate what it is you smelled and are now remembering. It's a fun way to make your brain work. After smelling a standard for "artificial fruit flavor", I couldn't guess what the smell was supposed to be, but got stuck on images of drinking juice boxes and eating popsicles as a kid. After smelling soy sauce mixed with base wine, I could distinctly remember drinking red wine that smelled just like this, but I had never identified the aroma. I drove myself crazy trying to name the smell and never figured out that it was soy.




After identifying the standards, we were asked to analyze real wines. Four whites on the first day and four reds on the next. Lo and behold, some of the wines smelled exactly like the standards we had identified. One white was a dead ringer for asparagus, another had distinctive bell pepper and green bean aromas. The reds were a little harder to pinpoint, but the descriptors we used showed consistent trends. One red had vanilla and caramel while others had fresh berry and spice or soy sauce and leather.
The lesson learned: the aromas in wine are a real thing. Volatile compounds exist in wine that create specific smells. Winemakers can use sensory analysis to adjust their winemaking techniques to avoid making wines that smell like green beans and olives. More importantly, smelling wine all day is a very, very good use of time.

ps. Thanks to Raymond for his pictures!