An aroma wheel can allow people to gain a common understanding of what good wine is. It can teach others how to make your type of wine. However, an aroma wheel cannot force others to appreciate your type of wine.

How to Make Homemade Wine: Using an Aroma Wheel

Some people attempt to learn how to make homemade wine based on how nice the wine smells to them. If you have very sensitive nostrils, you can probably identify many nuances in the wine that otherwise escape the noses of other people - but for those people who need a bit of help understanding what they smell, an aroma wheel might be necessary.

Why You Need an Aroma Wheel

An aroma wheel is simply a tool wine tasters use to identify specific nuances in wine that they can sense with their nostrils but which they may not be able to pinpoint the exact identity of. With an aroma wheel to help you, you will understand which wine varieties will tend to smell one way while other varieties have other scents making up their bouquet. An aroma wheel might also be useful because many scents of wine tend to disappear with one whiff, so it is good to be able to track down those nuances before you forget.

The smell of a certain type of wine will dictate to a great extent what it will taste like because our sense of smell is strongly intertwined with our sense of taste. A great-smelling wine will probably taste pretty good as well, and vice versa.

Using Our Sense of Smell in Learning How to Make Homemade Wine

Some experienced wine tasters may feel that the sense of smell is more important in the wine making process than our sense of taste. Why? Because our tongue can only discern salty, bitter, sour, and sweet flavors but our nose can discern quite a lot of scent nuances - hundreds maybe. And many people with a gift for detecting wine nuances can remember most of what they smell and use this for wine making too.

That is why cleanliness is very important in the process of how to make homemade wine - it would be hard to smell the delicate aroma of apples from your wine if something sour is sitting nearby. A clean working environment and sanitized wine making equipment will also help you get good results when making homemade wine, as opposed to bad quality wine that results when your wine making equipment is tainted with harmful organisms. And one of the first warning signs that you will get when something goes wrong while making homemade wine is that it will smell off-putting, maybe even downright bad. Bad-smelling wine is probably just junk that you will have to toss out anyway, and you probably won't need to taste that bad-smelling wine because your nose is a good judge of character (wine character that is.)

Why Vintners Use an Aroma Wheel

One good benefit that comes from using an aroma wheel is that vintners are able to describe what they smell in terms that other vintners will be able to identify with and talk about. This helps vintners understand one another and able to share knowledge about wine and wine making. If you can tell someone what to expect when they attempt to make wine, by using the terms on an aroma wheel, then they will find it easier to replicate your own results with the same recipe.

The aroma wheel allows wine makers to turn wine making into an actual science and discipline instead of a hit-and-miss approach, so that consistently good wine can be created. Experienced and knowledgeable vintners will know what caused the wine to smell that way too.

The aroma wheel is based on actual research that other wine aficionados and wine researchers have done about wine making processes and what scents are produced when these wine lovers use that specific wine process. The terms listed on the aroma wheel are meant to be both analytical and descriptive, rather than cute marketing terms that will mean nothing to a discerning food scientist.

The aroma wheel is based on three concentric circles of wine term categories. There is a basic broad category, which will then break down into certain sub-categories, and then each of those sub-categories will break down even further into specific fruit notes. This allows you to track down scents from general to specific and from specific to general, as needed.

This is not to say that all possible scent nuances have been discovered already and will fit on the aroma wheel. It is possible - in the advent of new types of wine and new wine making recipes - that perfectly unique scent nuances can be created too, eventually. But the point to using an aroma wheel is to be able to give wine makers a baseline of information on which to base their wine making, wine tasting and wine appreciation methods on.

Making Homemade Wine Based on Different Taste Preferences

One winemaker's taste for wine may make him happy but not allow other people to appreciate the wine he made. That is why making homemade wine hinges on personal choices as to scent, fruit notes, and taste of the wine itself. You cannot make all people like your choice of homemade wine, even using the same aroma wheel on which to gauge the newly made wine.

One reason for differences of opinion about wine is that one person's nose and tongue may have scent and taste receptors that differ greatly in sensitivity and preferences from those of another person. That is why making homemade wine is such an intensely personal and satisfying hobby as well - you might be able to create wine that tastes and smells the way you think wine should taste and smell. Even wine made by people who are closely related to one another or who are good friends may differ greatly from one another and be perceived differently by these same people.

So if you do pursue making homemade wine, don't immediately be disappointed if they don't appreciate your efforts just like that. Even an aroma wheel can't make your friends and family perceive wine the way you do.

More free wine making articles and a free e-course are available at the author's website at How to Make Homemade wine. Shop and buy at the author's other website Wine Making Equipment.

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