I wonder if others feel as I do that stepping outside for a few minutes to smell and taste makes my impressions of the wine significantly more accurate.
Leaving whatever indoor environment I’m in is a big “palate cleanser” for my nose. A huge portion of sensory enjoyment is olfactory, and thus I tend to like and remember wines consumed outside a bit more. Does anybody else find this to be true?
It also occurred to me to ask if anyone uses other simple tricks like this to increase their enjoyment of a bottle (at home or elsewhere)? Obviously, things like glassware may play a role (let’s not debate that particular one here), but what about lighting, sound, competing smells (might those in some cases help or even suggest flavors?) etc? I don’t mean to over analyze it, just trying to maximize the everyday experience.
When I am in crowded settings at a big tasting- I often find myself seeking a corner or just tuning out the entire table to focus. Not so much for enjoyment, but for making a good TN. Once I get the TNs done, I can relax and just enjoy the wine and company- making the additional odd note as the wines evolve.
For more serious evaluation- the absolute best setting for me is to taste a wine alone over several hours while I am working on a creative endeavor of some kind. In such settings, I am my most relaxed and yet also attentive and focused- if that makes sense- and a sip or two of wine is a nice periodic break from the intensity of creating something (be it painting, manually reconstructing a fabric etc.). This is how I get my best TNs.
The best environment for me is when I can drink great wine from proper stemware at any type of live musical performance. Usually hard to do unless you have a hookup.
For me, it was recognizing what I prefer more in wine. I have a relatively poor sense of smell, so when I get a whiff of something I can smell/enjoy – I will spend more time smelling than drinking. Conversely, I enjoy mouthfeel more than aromatics, so I will savor the wine in the mouth more after drinking it. So just the process of recognizing what I like in wine, and focusing more on those aspects, has helped me appreciate the experience more.
Same here. If I’m looking for an overall experience, there’s no topping sharing a special bottle with good friends.
But for sheer appreciation of the product itself, I thought of a few other things:
I like wines I can see - natural light shows the hue and clarity best
My senses are sharper earlier in the day - afternoon tasting is better than late night for me
I like tasting with others who are interested. The power of suggestion is a strong one and my friends frequently pick up notes I have missed but are there upon reflection
Quiet is better than loud for focus
So, if maximal enjoyment (for me) happens outside, in natural light, early in the day, in a relatively quiet space, with an interested group (and good stemware, etc)… I’m basically describing a tasting appointment at in Napa (Outpost comes to mind). No wonder I’m on so many mailers…
As for wine + live music, that just sounds like a good place to drink, period. It just happens that wine is the superlative alcoholic beverage. (But why am I getting notes of mary jane? Is this cab franc or something?)
I had not thought of stepping outdoors to get some fresh air – I will definitely try that.
At first I thought you were talking about environment/atmosphere that made a wine special – I remember a SA sauv blanc sitting at a table in a small cafe overlooking the ocean in Hermanus (South Africa). The taste and feel of the day are etched in my memory.
Back to the OP – I do think smell is the most important thing. I do find if I am cooking with strong herb or other flavor, I tend to taste that in the wine as well – which has to be wrong at some level. So the reverse, trying to get rid of those distractions, is important to fairly assess the wine. BUT, if the outside aroma helps me to enjoy the wine better, that is not a bad thing – I just need to make sure I remember why it tasted so good that time and why it might not the next time!
Like Tom, I tend to prefer sticking with a bottle over an evening, either reading or engaged in some other enjoyable activity. I find tastings (esp our tasting group in Seattle) to be extremely informative – I too discover things in a wine through the perception of others that I might not have otherwise discovered – as well as learn something about winemaking or a region that I did not otherwise know. But I don’t enjoy the wines as much that way. In fact sometimes there are just too many – I find that the x taste (maybe 8, or 10?) starts to become a bit blurry on my palate.
Anyway, nice topic – thanks for introducing it.
PS. Oh, I am a reluctant but complete believer in stemware. It is humbling to me how different a wine tastes in a different shaped wine glass. Makes me not order wine in certain restaurants if they have those squat small pour glasses that I associate with Italian restaurants in NY when I was young.
Thanks for your thoughts, Ron. I agree - the right pairing can certainly draw out features from a wine and make it take shape in a different light than alone. Neither is inherently better, but competing aromas aren’t always a bad thing. Still, we steam broccoli for our kids pretty regularly and have a (clean, short-haired) boxer dog in our house … so it’s nice to step out on the back porch on a typical weeknight. I find my appreciation for the wine is maybe 20-25% more.
There’s a sweet spot for me. When possible, I prefer to have at least 1-2 other quality bottles/glasses which can highlight the merits of the bottle I’m focusing on. It helps if these are related somewhat. I’ve posted before how I’m always impressed at those who can taste a large number of wines and maintain good notes. It gets muddled at some point.
There’s a restaurant in Dallas with some fairly decent (and certainly pricey) red and white burgundies by the glass that they serve in… wait for it… chunky lowball glasses. It makes no sense to me.
Good friends.
Good meal.
Relaxed, quiet atmosphere.
No chemical smells, perfume, scented deodorant.
Indoors. For me, aromas lose focus outdoors.
Decent stems.
Honestly, at home, especially during these wonderfully cool months in Florida, sitting on the deck or in the chaise overlooking my little lake. Love the company there with my wife sipping her New Zealand Sav Blancs, close friends, or just my dogs. I choose what I drink, the temperature and stems, the size of the pours, just perfect for me.
But not from sniffing. For me, as long as someone doesn’t have perfume, cologne, or some kind of lotion on, I’m OK. It’s nice to drink with other people or it’s nice to have a glass alone. Perception isn’t really affected, although the overall enjoyment may be. And I would no more step outside to sniff wine than to sniff cheese, steak, walnuts, or whatever. Seems a bit anti-social if you’re with other people for dinner.
I totally agree with the outdoor comment. Especially when it’s a nice crisp day/night, I feel like it immediately refreshes my palate, and often times emphasizes the nose of the wine even further (sometimes the palate to a lesser degree) when I step outside.
I have learned over the years a brief walk outside, less than a minute of brisk walking will revitalize my olfactory acuity at a tasting, most of which are eve events
Our olfactory systems are very plastic. In a controlled environment, if you are continually smelling a wine, your brain will turn down the volume of some of the more obvious smells, enabling you to perceive some more subtle ones. There’s an evolutionary purpose in this. In a tasting environment, it can be helpful to take a break and recover your primary perceptions. In follows that other smells in the environment that are low volume themselves could have an impact on your perception, so cleansing them out with some fresh air certainly could improve your perception of the wine.
Our sense perception area of the brain is pliable, meaning the same space could become dedicated to processing different sense, depending on how we’ve trained our brains. That’s why disruptive sounds can impact our sense of smell, for example (and more for some people than others). For some, sounds, like certain music, can harmonize with and enhance other senses.
Think spicy food. Have you ever had something so hot (which is tactile) that you can’t taste or smell? You may have also had something that was quite hot for you, but not too hot, that served to enhance your sense of taste and smell.
I really appreciate tasting outdoors. The only aromas that are bothersome are barnyard, otherwise the odors of outdoors seem to enhance the wines for me.
I recently ran across a tasting on on CT where the guy was blaming a bad tasting experience on it being a “root day”. I googled it and apparently it is a “thing” where different days in a lunar cycle or some such nonsense affect one’s enjoyment of drinking wine. Anyone here subscribe to this idea?