photo via WineEnthusiast

...the inside of a banana peel

...wet leaves on a forest floor

...cherry icee from the piragua man on the corner

...your grandmama's rose soap

You’ve heard me drop some wild—yet strangely accurate—descriptions of the wines we’ve shared together. Half the time you're sitting there like… girl, I just taste wine. Fair.

But then it hits you. You taste what I taste. Well not only have we shared an experience, we now share a language—not one that I made up. That we owe to Ann Noble.

In 1974, Noble became the first female faculty member in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at University of California Davis, where she taught sensory chemistry—the science of smell and taste. While teaching students how to evaluate wine, she realized they could smell just fine—they just didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it.

So in 1984 she created the Wine Aroma Wheel, a visual map that moves from broad aroma families like fruit, spice, or floral in the center to more specific notes like cherry, lemon, or pepper around the edge. As Noble once put it,

“How can you evaluate your own wine against others if you don’t use the same words?”

That shared language helps you and I find the right wine for you. Because here's something important I want to emphasize:

wine is a way to express a grape, it does not define the grape

Let's take Chardonnay for example. In California, you have hotter weather, that means more sugar, less acid. More sugar means more alcohol which means full-bodied and rich. Take it one step further, California, like Marlborough, like Chablis, like Tuscany -- all have a 'style' that defines them. In California, the vibe is Yankee Candle: vanilla, oak and butter. Those aromas are developing during winemaking. That's not the grape. If that's not your thing, don't write off Chard all together. Go for a Chablis. Cooler weather, unique soils, stainless steel aging creates a crisp, mineral style of Chardonnay that expresses the grape's true aromas of lemon, pear (or honey if you choose an older Chablis.)

That's why I want to work on your smell game. Shopping for wine is like shopping for shoes, so many options, so much fun to try.

Another and even more important reason to follow your nose (and why you see my nose all up in the glass and swirling it around)

80% of what you taste is based on what you smell

Your tongue is only good at figuring out the broad strokes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory). Your nose and your brain are doing the work, helping you figure what you're tasting and to possibly warn if it's a problem, raw, rotten poison.

When you take a whiff, the aromas travel up into your nasal cavity. That's when your brain starts scanning its memory bank, trying to match that smell with something you’ve experienced before—fruit, herbs, spices, toast, whatever.

When the match lands, suddenly you’re like: oh… that’s cherry. Sometimes it can land on something much more personal and trigger a memory of your grandmother's hand soap. The one with the fancy wrapper and... and a picture of a rose on the front. Smell--grandma's bathroom--fancy soap--rose on the wrapper--rose--Gewurtraminer!

So never be embarrassed or intimidated to share what that aroma triggers for you. If that's what you smelled, you're not wrong. The memory of the context of the smell is how you learned it. So be it. Let the wheel be your guide.

The Wine Aroma Wheel gives your brain a map to help find that word faster. Start in the middle of the Aroma Wheel with broad categories—fruit, spice, floral—and work outward until the word finally lands.

Use the wheel when you cook. Smell herbs before you chop them, fruit before you bite into it, spices before they hit the pan—and say the word out loud: lemon, basil, pepper, cinnamon. The more you do that, the more your brain stores those smells in your memory bank.

Describing wine stops feeling like a guessing game and becomes a journey towards discovery.

Which means the next time someone says they smell blackberry in a glass… they’re not being dramatic. The nose just knows. (I do love some drama with my wine, though)

So raise a glass to Ann Noble. She's deserves all the #LadyFlex