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A group of Francophiles was both charmed and challenged last night at Chateau Wine Merchant's Bodega Bar by Alexandre Martin and his introduction to Le Nez du Vin, Jean Lenoir's French method for codifying and understanding the aromas in wine.
Think of it, Martin began by saying, as a wine vocabulary. Martin is not only wise in the ways of wine (he started his career at the Paris Wine Museum), he also translated Le Nez into Russian - and spoke to us in perfect if accented English. So this guy was running on a few more cyclinders than most of us.
We were huddled around a long table in the wine cellar, when Martin started with a PowerPoint overview of AOCs (appellations) in France, noting that there are underlying aromas common to the wines from each one. We were told that there are three classifications of aromas: primary, from the grapes themselves; secondary, from the oak barrels; and tertiary, from storage (aged wine vs. young).
Whoa, was there going to be test later? 'Turns out, yes, sort of.
Le Nez du Vin is pretty much a wine-lover's fantasy - a set of 54 isolated aromas by which one identifies a wine - raspberry, cedar, cut grass, leather - plus an instructional book.
We did not get 54. We got nine. Not only that, we didn't know what the nine were. Each set of three went with a wine we were going to taste. All we knew was that the wines were pinot noirs. Our task was ID the aromas, then tell how old the wine was, whether it was New World or Old World, the appellation - a challenge for most of us.
Some sniffs weren't difficult. 'Most everyone got raspberry. But there were a couple that we went 'round and 'round with. You knew they smelled like something you knew - but what? People started conversing in French - this was sponsored by Alliance Francaise - but that didn't seem to get them any closer to the answer.
I wrote down "creme caramel" and "burnt caramel" for what turned out to be oak, "chamomile" for what was really cut grass. Close, but not close enough. The folks with the most right answers got a prize. I did not. Unless you count humble pie.
Still, the aromas haunted me, and I wished I had one of Le Nez du Vin sets to play with, but at $399 at www.makescentsofwine.com, it probably won't be under this year's Christmas tree. If there's a wine lover you'd like to get one for, there are smaller, more focused sets, as well as Le Nez du Cafe (coffee) and Le Nez du Cigare (cigars).
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