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How do you train your senses?
Everyone can train their sensory skills. This is done first and foremost by consciously tasting wine. When tasting wine, one should try again and again to analyse and describe the smell and taste. Only through one's own experience does sensory experience set in, and only through continuous training have even professional wine tasters and critics gained their expertise.
The basis for being able to recognise and name aromas is the conscious sensory perception of the environment: What do flowers, plants, fruits, vegetables smell like? This applies to as many individual species as possible. What does the forest smell like - in spring, in summer, in autumn? What do earth and rocks smell like - dry, warm, cold, wet? What do herbs, nuts and spices smell like - again, as many individual species as possible? How do fruits and herbs smell and taste when they are fresh and when they are dried? What do preserved or pickled fruits or vegetables taste like? How does fresh wood smell, how does burnt wood smell? What are roasted aromas, what are smoky notes? How does food smell and taste when it is fresh and when it is cooked (boiled, stewed, roasted, grilled)? Many of these questions are already easy to pay attention to every time you prepare food.
In addition, you can train your sense of smell and taste through exercises and references.
Train your nose
With the help of olfactory references, you can refresh your memory for certain scents. For this purpose, there are various aroma sets in different versions from several suppliers, such as Le Nez du Vin, Aromaster or Aromabar. According to the manufacturers, these sets contain the most important aromas found in wine in small vials so that they can be "sniffed" at any time. Such sets are available for both typical white wine and red wine aromasand even specifically for wine faults. At around 300 euros each, however, these sets are relatively expensive, and the aromas that are prepared here are artificially produced, which is noticeable in some cases.
More true to nature and significantly cheaper are therefore references produced in-house. Below are some examples that can be added to as desired; the production principle is always similar.
A base wine is required for these recipes. This should be a neutral, simple wine; for example, a dry Müller-Thurgau or a passable northern Italian Pinot Grigio for about three euros per bottle is quite sufficient for this.
Recipes for white wine smell references
- Lemon
mix freshly squeezed lemon juice 1:2 with the base wine - Grapefruit
mix freshly squeezed grapefruit juice 1:2 with the base wine - Apple, pear
Cut the apple or pear into small pieces and steep for 3 hours in the base wine - Peach, Apricot
Mix peach or apricot nectar (e.g. Granini) 1:1 with the base wine - Pineapple
steep 1/12 of a fresh pineapple in 200 ml of the base wine - Honey
dissolve 2 teaspoons of honey in 30 ml of base wine - Mushrooms
cut 30 g mushrooms into small pieces and let them steep for 3 hours in 200 ml base wine - Grass
cut fresh grass into small pieces and steep for 2 hours in the base wine
Recipes for red wine aroma references
- Strawberry
steep 30 ml strawberry preserves and one fresh strawberry in 70 ml base wine - Raspberry
steep two crushed raspberries in 100 ml base wine for 1 hour - Currant
add 10 ml cassis syrup to 90 ml base wine - Prune
cut two prunes into small pieces and steep for 3 hours in 100 ml of base wine - Herbs
add 0.5 to 1 ml of herb liqueur to 100 ml of base wine - Clove
infuse two cloves for 3 hours in 100 ml of base wine - Pepper
crush two black peppercorns and steep in 100 ml of base wine - green pepper
a 10x10 mm piece of fresh paprika infused for 30 minutes in 100 ml of base wine - Vanilla
add 1 ml vanilla extract to 100 ml base wine - Oak wood
roast 1 g of oak wood shavings in the oven at 60 °C for 1 hour and then steep in 100 ml of base wine for 3 hours - Coffee
steep a crushed coffee bean in 100 ml of base wine - Cocoa
steep 2 pinches of cocoa in 100 ml of base wine
If you want to try to recognise the aromas blindly, you should fill the finished mixtures into neutral containers and number them (note the key for the resolution!) or you can colour them with food colouring.
Training the tongue
Taste training is essentially about experiencing the tastes of sweet and sour.
Sensation of sweetness
The basis for the following references is a sugar solution in a ratio of 50 g of sugar to one litre of liquid. The liquid used can be a base wine (see above) or simply water.
Then the following mixtures are created in glasses placed next to each other; it is easiest to count out the proportions in each case with teaspoons and pour them directly into the corresponding glass:
neutral | 32 parts liquid |
3 g/l | 2 parts sugar solution to 32 parts liquid |
6 g/l | 4 parts sugar solution to 28 parts liquid |
12 g/l | 8 parts sugar solution to 20 parts liquid |
etc. | etc. |
Then a third person replaces two of the glasses in secret and the test person must then taste which two glasses were replaced. Depending on the individual threshold values, the concentrations can also be varied accordingly.
Acid sensation
Here, the basis for the following references is an acid solution in the ratio of 10 g citric acid to one litre of liquid (base wine or water).
Then, again in glasses placed next to each other, the following mixtures are created:
neutral | 31 parts liquid |
0.3 g/l | 1 part acid solution to 30 parts liquid |
0.6 g/l | 2 parts acid solution to 29 parts liquid |
0.9 g/l | 3 parts acid solution to 28 parts liquid |
etc. | etc. |
Then a third person again replaces two of the glasses in secret, and the test person must then taste which two glasses were replaced. Here, too, the concentrations can be varied according to individual threshold values.
Interaction between sweetness and acidity
The next level of sensory training is to learn how sweetness and acidity influence each other's taste perception and to learn to separate the two tastes in perception.
To do this, a series of reference solutions is built up in which acidity and sweetness occur simultaneously:
Sugar (g/l) | Acidity (g/l) | Proportions of sugar solution | Proportions of acid solution | Proportions of neutral liquid |
---|---|---|---|---|
3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 30 |
3 | 0,9 | 2 | 3 | 27 |
6 | 0 | 4 | ß | 28 |
6 | 0,6 | 4 | 2 | 26 |
6 | 0,6 | 4 | 3 | 25 |
12 | 0,3 | 8 | 1 | 23 |
12 | 0,9 | 8 | 3 | 21 |
The task now is to correctly order these samples according to sweetness or acidity. (The values in the table can also be varied as desired)