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Smelling with Your Mouth
Appears in
Published 2010
Our experience tells us that we “taste” the flavour of raspberries or oak or apples in wine. The only ingredients that go into wine are grapes, however, and perhaps a hint of the wood from the barrel they were aged in. What you taste are actually aromatic compounds from the fermented grapes. The compounds are vaporised in your mouth and your brain registers them as smells. In effect, you’re smelling with your mouth.
The tongue registers only four basic flavours -sweetness at the front, sourness or acidity at the sides, saltiness (a flavour not usually found in wine) in between and bitterness at the back. By moving the wine around and over your tongue you allow yourself to taste all of the aspects and appreciate all of the flavours of the wine. When you take wine into your mouth in a tasting, the wine usually reaches the front of your tongue first, so you taste the wine’s sweetness first, sourness and acidity next, followed by bitterness. Our mouths can also interpret the substance and texture of a wine.