Step 2: On the Nose

This is where serious tasters really get down to business. The nose of a wine - a term that simply means the smell - tells you just as much as the flavour. Even if you’re just drinking, rather than tasting properly, it’s worth spending a few moments “on the nose”. Missing out on the nose means losing out on much of the flavour and subtlety of a wine.

Wines can smell of flowers, too, although it is seldom as easy to pin down a particular flower smell. An aroma of roses is not uncommon on wines from the gewürztraminer grape, but for most wines, a vague impression of general spring flowers is far more usual.