What are the many wine flavours found in the various wine aromas wheels with descriptions such as strawberries, apple and vanilla? So, when you smell wine, the alcohol volatilises and carries these lighter-than-air aroma compounds into your nose. Each wine can contain hundreds of different aroma compounds and each compound can affect the flavour of a wine. From a chemical perspective, flavours are the manifestation of compounds that are released at different stages during the wine life cycle. When we smell these compounds, a stimulus is transmitted to our brain that compares it to a “memory” of known sensations – eventually conjuring a final impression.

Being fascinated by science and empirical research, in this episode, I spoke to Sietze Wijma a MSc Sensory Science graduate and founder of the art of tasting who will walk us through some of the major flavours compounds, their names and chemistry, explaining how they come about and some of the faults in wines and what are the key compound that one should know.

Specific anosmia of flavour compounds Specific anosmia (smell-blindness) is the phenomenon where a person is unable to detect a specific flavour compound, where they otherwise have an intact sense of smell. For example, 30% of the population is unable to detect rotundone (black pepper-like aroma). β-ionone (violet-like aroma) has a 50% specific anosmia rate. Isoamyl acetate (banana-like aroma) has a <1% specific anosmia rate. This has implication for wine tasting.

Here is Sietze website The art of Tasting: https://artoftasting.nl/
And some further information about flavours compounds and other items related to the topic: https://www.jancisrobinson.com/learn/vocabulary/aromas https://www.decanter.com/learn/understanding-wine-aromas-329940/ https://winefolly.com/tips/wine-aroma-wheel-100-flavors/
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