ALet's start with something almost nobody does, and something some have made into such a performance that many people skip it entirely, too embarrassed to give it a real try: smelling the wine.

Not the polite, self-conscious, half-second sniff that people do when they feel they ought to be doing something with their nose before drinking. Not the theatrical swirl followed by an enormous inhalation while everyone at the table watches and waits for the verdict. Just actually smelling the wine. Intentionally. With some attention.

Because here is the thing that tends to surprise people when they first hear it: wine is mostly about smell. Not taste. Smell.

The two senses are more intertwined than most people realize. If you have ever had a significant cold — the kind that completely blocks the nose — you will have noticed that food loses most of its flavor at the same time. Not because your taste buds stopped working. They didn't. But because so much of what we experience as flavor is actually smell, processed through the back of the nose while we eat and drink. Without smell, food becomes texture and sweetness and salt, but the actual flavors — the things that make a ripe peach different from an apple — largely disappear. Wine is no different.

What Tasting Notes Actually Mean

When a wine is described as having notes of blackberry, or vanilla, or cocoa, or dried violets, or — god help us — forest floor, many people reasonably assume that these things were somehow added to the wine. That someone, somewhere in the production process, introduced an element of blackberry or vanilla into the barrel.

They did not. Nobody is back there sprinkling fruit into the tank like a sangria experiment gone rogue.

What those tasting notes are describing is what the wine smells like — or more precisely, what it reminds the taster of when they smell it. The mortal brain is a pattern-recognition machine. When you smell something, your brain searches its memory for anything familiar and attaches a label to it. So when someone smells a Cabernet Sauvignon and says blackberry, they are saying: this smell reminds me of blackberry. Not: there are blackberries in here.

But here is the important part: you do not have to smell what anyone else smells. One person gets cherry. Another gets plum. A third person shrugs and says it smells good. All three of those responses are correct. All three of those people are having a legitimate wine experience.

So the next time you pour a glass, try this. Give it a swirl. Put your nose in the glass and take a good whiff. Notice what you notice. Name it if you can. Don't worry if you can't. That is the beginning of the whole experience — and it is the part most people skip entirely because they are in a hurry to get to the drinking.

We understand the impulse. But trust us on this one. For instance...

Our Pinot Noir — Best of Class, 93 Points: 'Plum and cocoa dust. Complex, interesting, satisfying, all Pinot Noir.'



Cheers!

— The Count