There is a moment, when you first lower your nose to a glass of wine, that feels almost indecently intimate. The world recedes; conversation blurs; time slows. It’s just you and that quiet swirl of scent rising from the glass, promising stories of sun and soil, of cellars and seasons, of patience and pleasure. Learning to read those aromas – to really understand them – is not about snobbery or jargon. It’s about deepening delight. And that, to my mind, is the most delicious kind of education there is.

Let’s walk, slowly and sensually, through the art of using your nose to evaluate wine. Think of this not as a technical manual, but as a love letter to aroma – and a gentle guide to mastering it.

Why Aroma Matters More Than You Think

Before we plunge our noses into the glass, it’s worth pausing to understand why smell is so central to wine.

We talk about “tasting” wine, but most of what we call taste is actually aroma. Your tongue, faithful though it is, can only really distinguish a handful of basic sensations: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Everything else – the strawberries, the smoke, the honey, the leather-bound library in autumn – is your nose at work.

When you sip wine, aroma molecules travel up the back of your throat to your nasal passages in what’s called retronasal smelling. This is why a blocked nose makes everything taste like damp cardboard. It’s also why, when you train your nose, your whole wine world expands from black-and-white sketch to full Technicolor.

Learning to evaluate aroma isn’t about memorizing a list of “correct” smells. It’s about increasing your sensitivity, your vocabulary, and, perhaps most importantly, your attention. Aroma is where wine stops being just a drink and becomes an experience.

Preparing Yourself (and Your Glass) for Scented Seduction

To coax the full aromatic story from your wine, you need to set the scene properly. Think of it as laying the table for your nose.

Choose the Right Glass

You don’t need a cupboard full of hyper-specific stemware, but shape does matter.

• Use a tulip-shaped glass – wider at the bowl, gently narrowing at the rim. This gives the wine space to release its aromas and then funnels them towards your nose.
• Avoid tiny, shallow glasses – they suffocate aroma and make swirling difficult.
• Hold by the stem – not to be prim, but to avoid warming the bowl with your hand and smearing the glass with fingerprints and stray scents.

Mind the Temperature

A wine that’s too cold is like a shy guest in a corner, refusing to speak. Too warm, and it can become loud, blowsy, and unbalanced.

• Whites and rosés: Cool, but not icy. Straight-from-the-fridge cold mutes aroma; give them a few minutes to soften.
• Reds: Slightly cooler than a typical centrally heated room. Think gentle spring evening rather than blazing radiator.

As the wine warms in the glass, aromas will unfurl. Let time be part of the pleasure.

Clear the Scented Stage

Your nose is easily distracted, and like any diva, it doesn’t like competition.

• Avoid strong perfumes, scented candles, or recently cooked pungent foods.
• Rinse your hands if they smell of garlic, onion, or soap.
• If you’re tasting several wines, keep the room as neutral as possible. You want the wine to speak, not to shout over background noise.

The Three-Act Ritual of Smelling Wine

Evaluating aroma isn’t one single sniff; it’s a gentle, unfolding ritual. Think of it as a three-act play.

Act I: The First, Still Sniff

Pour the wine and, before you swirl, bring the glass to your nose.

• Hold the glass by the stem, just below your nose.
• Take a soft, steady inhalation – not a desperate gasp.
• Ask yourself: What’s the first impression? Fresh? Fruity? Floral? Earthy? Shy? Bold?

At this stage, you’re getting the lighter, more volatile aromas that leap up straight away. It’s a first hello, not a full conversation.

Act II: The Swirl and Release

Now, give the wine a swirl. This is not a performance for Instagram; it’s simply a practical way of encouraging more aroma molecules to escape into the air.

• Swirl the glass gently on the table if you’re nervous about sloshing.
• After a few seconds, bring the glass back to your nose.
• Take a series of short sniffs rather than one long drag. You’ll notice more and avoid numbing your senses.

Here, the wine begins to open up. Fruit becomes more defined, flowers bloom, spices emerge. The story is becoming more detailed.

Act III: Getting Closer, Getting Deeper

Don’t be afraid to get intimate.

• Dip your nose slightly into the glass (within reason) and inhale again.
• Try alternating between one nostril and the other – many people have one more sensitive side.
• Linger, but not too long. A few seconds, then rest. Your nose, like you, needs pauses.

This is where complexity reveals itself: layers of fruit, herbs, earth, wood, perhaps something savoury or smoky. You’re no longer just smelling; you’re listening.

Understanding the Aromatic “Families”

Wine can smell of almost anything, but our poor brains crave order. It helps to group aromas into loose families. You don’t need to force a wine into a box; this is just a way of organising your thoughts.

Fruit and Freshness

Most wines – especially younger ones – will give you fruit first.

• White wines: lemon, lime, grapefruit, green apple, pear, peach, apricot, pineapple, mango.
• Red wines: strawberry, raspberry, cherry, plum, blackberry, blackcurrant.

Notice:

• Are the fruits fresh, like biting into a crisp apple?
• Or ripe and sweet, like jam or compote?
• Or even dried, like raisins or prunes?

Ripeness in aroma often hints at ripeness in flavour and alcohol.

Floral and Herbal Notes

Some wines are like walking through a garden.

• Floral: rose, violet, jasmine, orange blossom, elderflower.
• Herbal/green: cut grass, mint, basil, eucalyptus, green bell pepper, tomato leaf.

These can signal grape variety (Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, is often grassy or nettly) or cooler-climate wines.

Spice, Oak, and Sweet Temptations

When wine has been aged in oak barrels, or simply has a certain richness, you may find:

• Vanilla, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg.
• Toast, smoke, coffee, chocolate, caramel.
• Coconut or sweet baking spices.

These are like the kitchen scents of wine – comforting, warming, inviting. They often come from oak ageing, but can also develop with bottle age.

Earth, Mineral, and the Savoury Side

Some wines are less about fruit salad and more about forest walks and old stone walls.

• Earth, wet leaves, mushroom, truffle.
• Leather, tobacco, cedar wood.
• Chalk, flint, wet stone, sea spray.

These savoury, “non-fruity” aromas can make a wine feel more serious, more contemplative, more grown-up.

Finding the Words: Building Your Aroma Vocabulary

One of the greatest frustrations in learning to evaluate wine is this: we often recognise a smell, but can’t name it. It hovers just out of reach, like a word on the tip of your tongue.

The solution is not to strain and panic, but to gently train.

Smell Everything (On Purpose)

Make smelling an everyday habit.

• When you slice a lemon, pause and inhale deeply.
• Crush herbs between your fingers and memorise the scent.
• Smell spices from their jars, one by one.
• Notice the smell of rain on hot pavement, of fresh soil, of a just-opened packet of dried apricots.

You are building a mental library. The fuller your shelves, the easier it becomes to match what’s in your glass to what’s in your memory.

Use Comparisons, Not Perfection

You don’t have to be exact. Wine does not contain actual strawberries or cigar boxes; it merely reminds you of them.

Instead of fretting over whether it’s blackcurrant or blackberry, you might simply say: “dark berries.” Instead of pinning down whether that’s cedar or cigar box, you might think: “polished wood, a bit smoky.”

Wine language is metaphorical by nature. Let it be suggestive rather than scientific.

From Pleasure to Evaluation: What Your Nose Can Tell You

While I never want to strip the romance from wine, your nose can also offer practical clues about quality, condition, and style.

Is the Wine Clean?

Very occasionally, wine can be faulty.

• Cork taint (TCA): smells like damp cardboard, a musty cupboard, or a wet dog. The fruit seems muted, as if someone turned the volume down.
• Oxidation: if a wine that shouldn’t be brown smells like bruised apples, stale nuts, or tired sherry, it may be oxidised.
• Volatile acidity (VA): in small doses, it can smell intriguingly like balsamic or nail polish remover; in excess, it’s harsh and distracting.

If the dominant impression is unpleasant and overwhelming, rather than intriguing or complex, the wine may be flawed.

What Style Is It?

Your nose can hint at:

• Age: Younger wines tend to be more fruit-forward and floral; older wines may show more earth, spice, leather, dried fruit, or nutty notes.
• Climate: Cooler-climate wines often smell more tart-fruited and herbal; warmer-climate wines lean towards riper, lusher, sometimes jammy fruit.
• Winemaking choices: Oak ageing, lees contact (which can give bready or brioche aromas), or skin contact in whites (leading to tea-like, herbal, or orange-peel scents).

You don’t need to turn every glass into a detective case, but it can be quietly thrilling to let your nose guide your guesses.

Training Your Wine Nose: Simple, Luxurious Exercises

Like any sense, your nose gets better with use. Fortunately, this kind of training is gloriously pleasurable.

Side-by-Side Scent Sessions

Pour two or three wines at once – they don’t need to be grand, just different.

For example:

• A Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, and a Riesling.
• Or a Pinot Noir, a Merlot, and a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Smell them in turn, without worrying about right or wrong. Just ask:

• Which is more fruity?
• Which is more floral?
• Which smells darker, lighter, fresher, richer?

Comparison sharpens perception. It’s easier to notice differences than to analyse one wine in isolation.

Blind Aroma Games

You can buy aroma kits, but you can also make your own little olfactory playground.

• Put things in small, covered glasses or jars: lemon peel, crushed blackberries, ground coffee, vanilla pod, dried herbs.
• Smell them with your eyes closed and try to identify them.
• Then move to wine and see which aromas you can find echoes of.

It’s playful, a little silly, and surprisingly effective.

Giving Yourself Permission to Enjoy, Not Perform

There is a tendency, in some circles, to turn wine into an exam. Notes must be precise, vocabulary impressive, judgements firm. I would beg you to resist this.

Your nose is not there to prove anything. It is there to give you pleasure, to deepen your relationship with what’s in your glass.

If all you can say at first is “this smells like summer” or “this reminds me of my grandmother’s kitchen,” that is not a failure. It is the beginning of your own, personal wine language. With time, that language will become more detailed, but it should never lose its intimacy.

Drawing It All Together: The Quiet Magic of Paying Attention

To master the wine nose is not to become a walking aroma encyclopaedia. It is, instead, to cultivate a kind of scented mindfulness.

You prepare the glass and the room.
You swirl, softly.
You lower your nose and breathe.

You notice the first impression, then the details, then the changes as the wine sits in the glass and in your memory. You let fruit and flower, spice and stone, earth and air all have their say. You don’t rush to label; you simply listen. And slowly, gently, you begin to understand.

In the end, evaluating aroma is less about being clever than about being present. It’s an invitation to linger, to savour, to allow a simple glass of wine to become a small, fragrant ceremony in your day.

So next time you pour yourself a glass, don’t hurry to sip. Pause. Bring it to your nose. Breathe in, deeply and luxuriously. Let the wine tell you its story – and allow your nose, newly attentive and ever more discerning, to revel in every scented syllable.