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Wine Tasting Tips #4 Two must-have tools for your tasting kit
May 30, 2017
Hello

Issue #4

You will find in this issue:

  • Two must-have tools for your wine tasting kit

  • Two worth-sharing sensory news

  • Two special offers for the newsletter subscribers


    • Two must-have tools in your wine tasting kit

    The whole purpose of Wine Tasting Demystified is to share with you key resources so you feel comfortable when tasting wine in a casual or more formal setting. Whether you are a novice wine taster or a more experienced one, your basic wine tasting kit must include at the minimum a couple of ISO glasses, a corkscrew, a notebook and of course some wine bottles you want to taste. You can expand your wine tasting kit with the tools and tips I shared in this article .

    However, there are two important tools that could make your tasting experience more memorable

    Tool #1: Wine aroma kit


    A wine aroma kit can help you and your tasting partners identify some wine aromas that are difficult to describe and also can help resolve some disagreements in your tasting notes. Rather than arguing whether the wine smells like butter or vanilla, smelling aroma references of butter and vanilla will help reach a consensus description.
    You can create your own wine aroma kit for the special tasting occasion with the recipes Dr. Ann Noble shared with us.

    If you have less time or want to be able to train without concocting the aroma references yourself, you may want to check out a commercial aroma kit.
    I had the opportunity recently to use and play with the Red Wine aroma kit of Wine Awakenings.


    I was impressed by the quality of the materials included in the kit. I found that few aromas were not the best examples of the aroma descriptors they were supposed to represent; however, they were good training starter. Read the complete review of the Red wine aroma kit
    More than one aroma reference is necessary to represent the full spectrum of the aroma nuances. Think of color? Is there only one yellow paint chip available at your favorite hardware store? No!
    Learn more on how to use a wine aroma kit.

    I am pleased to share that I entered in a partnership with Wine Awakenings so that you can access their aroma kits at a discounted price.



    As a subscriber of Wine Tasting Tips, Wine Awakenings offer you a $15 CAD discount on any of their 12 aroma kits (retailing $149 CAD).


    Use the promo code IL01 when purchasing a 12 wine aroma kit online.
    If you are keen on the Master series (retailing $349 CAD and more), please contact directly Rita by e-mail to get your discount.

    Why waiting for Christmas to indulge in a very useful aroma kit or making this useful gift to a dear wine lover?


    Tool 2: Wine Aroma wheel

    The wine aroma wheel is the basic tool to help you articulate the aromas you perceive when smelling or tasting a wine. It’s a simple way to get you match the sensations you perceive with aroma categories that are generic in the center of the wheel (fruity, woody) towards more precise aroma descriptors on the outer circle such as raspberry or burnt toast.

    Add the wine aroma wheel to your tasting kit .


    We refund the shipping cost of any online purchase of 1-3 items to be shipped in North America (Valid until June 30 2017; count up to 2 business days to receive the shipping fee refund via PayPal).

    Sensory News

    This is not a new news and the popularity of this article on social media is amazing to me. That map of tastes on the tongue you learned in school is all wrong!. This article shares the history of the tongue map myth and how scientific data can be misinterpreted. Read more on the sense of taste in the article on gustation I shared with you in the last issue.





    “Dogs may be better than humans at discriminating the urines on a fire hydrant and humans may be better than dogs at discriminating the odours of fine wine, but few such comparisons have actual experimental support".
    This quote is from Dr. McGann who argues that humans have excellent olfactory abilities contrarily to the popular beliefs that human evolution decreased the importance of this sense compared to other species like dogs. Read more....

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