Wine Aroma Wheel
| Introduction | Glossary of Terms | See, Smell, Taste |
| Wine Aroma Wheel | How to Order a Wine |

Our sense of smell is even more important to experiencing wine than our sense of taste. Our tongues recognize only four tastes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. With our sense of smell, however, we may identify hundreds of substances from memory or by association.

Smells have the power to evoke memory, emotion and mood. Many of these associations are immediate and instinctive: freshly-mowed grass can bring to mind a history of summers; the scent of a familiar cologne or perfume evokes the presence of a loved one. The same is true for wine. When you bring a glass of wine to your nose, inhale deeply, you record to memory your very first impressions. Every person will have a different set of associations with which to identify a wine's characteristics, and it can be delightful to compare responses.

Developed by Ann Noble, enologist at University of California at Davis, the Wine Aroma Wheel provides a common vocabulary for greater accuracy in communicating what you smell in a wine. The innermost circle provides general descriptors, such as fruity, spicy or floral, while the subsequent rings grow more specific for more accurate identification. For example, if you find a wine's aroma fruity, the Wine Aroma Wheel helps you narrow your impression, perhaps to tropical fruit or berries, and then to make further distinctions — raspberries, strawberries, blackberries — within those categories. The more precisely you identify your experience in recognized terms, the more clearly you will be able to communicate your impressions and understand the impressions described by others.