More on the sense of smell

Everyone is born able to smell but learning to smell well takes practice. The more often we do it the more often we get in touch with one of our most neglected senses.

Emile Peynaud, the author of Connaissance et Travail du Vin suggests setting out on a scent hunt ‘exploring gardens, meadows, heaths and prairies every season, with our nose as a guide, crumple a leaf, smell a flower, squeeze a fruit, sniff the range of spices and condiments in our cupboards, breath in the scent of the herbs used in cooking, the herbalist’s medicinal plants, the liqueur-maker’s essences; carefully inhale a cologne, or a soap, recognise the perfume a woman is wearing.’

Peynaud is a contributor to the remarkable Le Nez du Vin series, which is made up of aromas of fruit, flower and spice that can be found in wine, and captured in little glass bottles. Produced by the French wine-lover Jean Lenoir, Le Nez du Vin offers a fascinating way to educate your sense of smell. You will learn how to recognise the blackcurrant and raspberry in your pinot noir; the green pepper in your cabernet-sauvignon; the truffle in your merlot; the blackberry and cinnamon in your shiraz; the undergrowth in your nebbiolo; the hazelnut and pineapple in your chardonnay; the lemon and muscat in your riesling; the pear in your pinot gris; and the apricot and quince in your sémillon.

I’ve found that a good way to start training your sense of smell by using this portable perfumery is to simply start by smelling and tasting a wine and trying to guess its scents and flavours. Then I read the label to find out what the producer says. For example, the bottle I have in front of me now talks of the wine’s ‘well-blended fruit aromas of raspberry, blackberry, cranberry and a hint of liquorice and violets on a spicy background’. Next, I sniff the corresponding scents in the small bottles. Then I smell the wine again. If what the wine producer is saying is correct, then I almost certainly pick up those scents.

Illustrating the close relationship between smell and taste, I also find that when I taste the wine for the second time it tastes completely different, and far more complex, that it did before the smell test. It will not only teach you how to better appreciate wine, but also enhances the pleasure of existence. And, while sniffing, your life-clock is slowed to a far more pleasing pace.

Look up Le Nez du Vin at www.nezduvin.co.uk

Image credit: Ken Hawkins/flickr