The Colour And Aroma Of Wine

Though it is entirely possible to drink and enjoy wine without any knowledge of the subject, it is true that you will appreciate it further more if you know a few facts about the colour and aroma of wine. You may follow a logical approach to an unfamiliar glass of wine. The first thing to check is the colour, which will tell you a lot about the wine.

With red wine, the colour spectrum may range from vibrant red of a young wine to brick red of a mature port wine. Ageing is a factor here; red wines tend to lose colour with age, fading from a glowing red to a brick red colour over the years. Deep colours indicate a wine of body and stature. White wines, too, have great colour variation, from the watery hue, through shades of gold, and from there to the brownish tones of sherry. Colour in white wine is a telltale sign of sweetness or dryness. For instance, a famous dessert wine, such as Sauternes, is sparkling golden in colour. Age affects the colour of dry wine too, which is pale when young but tends to develop some colour with age.

The olfactory system plays a crucial and evocative part in enjoying a glass of wine. When the wine is being poured in a glass, the initial sniff is indicative of the pleasure to come. It’s only when the sense of smell confirms to the rich aroma of a wine that you reach out to drink that wine. The aroma of a wine is very subjective. A wine drinker associates it with herbal aromas, vegetative aromas, different fruits, flowers, vanilla, and strawberry and so on. In essence, a wine drinker may associate the aroma of a wine with just about anything so long as she is able to define that characteristic aroma that defies words.

Moreover, one wine taster may not agree with another when it comes to describing the aroma of a wine. A wine that makes one wine taster think of raspberries, may be associated with strawberries by another. The subjectivity of the matter is the reason for two different descriptions for the aroma of a wine, though both maybe right. It is an attempt to describe something that defies words – The aroma of a wine.