Wine Aroma Wheel: Free Interactive & Printable
A free interactive wine aroma wheel with 20 clusters and 130 descriptors, arranged the way the WSET SAT groups them, plus a printable lexicon and fault list.
Turn the wheel
Sommo aroma wheelTap any segment to see the descriptors that sit under it.
The whole lexicon, on one page
Primary aromas
From the grape itself and from fermentation. What the fruit brought.
| Cluster | Descriptors |
|---|---|
| Floral | acacia, honeysuckle, chamomile, elderflower, geranium, blossom, rose, violet |
| Green fruit | apple, gooseberry, pear, pear drop, quince, grape |
| Citrus fruit | grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange peel, lemon peel |
| Stone fruit | peach, apricot, nectarine |
| Tropical fruit | banana, lychee, mango, melon, passion fruit, pineapple |
| Red fruit | redcurrant, cranberry, raspberry, strawberry, red cherry, red plum |
| Black fruit | blackcurrant, blackberry, bramble, blueberry, black cherry, black plum |
| Dried or cooked fruit | fig, prune, raisin, sultana, kirsch, jamminess, baked fruit, stewed fruit, preserved fruit |
| Herbaceous | green bell pepper, grass, tomato leaf, asparagus, blackcurrant leaf |
| Herbal | eucalyptus, mint, medicinal, lavender, fennel, dill |
| Pungent spice | black pepper, white pepper, liquorice |
| Other primary | wet stones, flint, candy, boiled sweets |
Secondary aromas
From winemaking. Yeast, malolactic conversion, and oak.
| Cluster | Descriptors |
|---|---|
| Yeast and lees | biscuit, bread, toast, pastry, brioche, bread dough, cheese, yogurt |
| Malolactic conversion | butter, cream, cheese |
| Oak | vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, coconut, butterscotch, toast, cedar, charred wood, smoke, chocolate, coffee, resinous |
Tertiary aromas
From deliberate oxidation, fruit development, and bottle age.
| Cluster | Descriptors |
|---|---|
| Deliberate oxidation | almond, marzipan, hazelnut, walnut, chocolate, coffee, toffee, caramel |
| Fruit development, whites | dried apricot, marmalade, dried apple, dried banana |
| Fruit development, reds | fig, prune, tar, dried blackberry, dried cranberry, cooked blackberry, cooked red plum |
| Bottle age, whites | petrol, kerosene, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, toast, nutty, mushroom, hay, honey |
| Bottle age, reds | leather, forest floor, earth, mushroom, game, tobacco, vegetal, wet leaves, savory, meaty, farmyard |
Faults, because half of "I cannot place this" is really this
| Fault | What it smells like |
|---|---|
| Cork taint (TCA) | Wet cardboard, damp cellar, musty. Fruit goes flat and short. |
| Oxidation | Bruised apple, sherry, nutty in a wine that should be fresh. Color deepens toward gold or brown. |
| Volatile acidity | Nail polish remover, vinegar. A small amount adds lift, too much is a fault. |
| Reduction | Struck match, rubber, boiled cabbage, drains. Often blows off with air. |
| Brettanomyces | Band aid, barnyard, sweaty leather. Divisive at low levels, a fault at high ones. |
| Lightstrike | Wet wool, cooked cabbage in a clear-bottled white or sparkling wine. |
| Refermentation | Unexpected spritz and haze in a still wine. |
Aroma wheels are usually posters: attractive, arranged for the printer rather than for the taster, and organized in a way that tells you nothing about the wine. This one is arranged the way the WSET Systematic Approach groups aromas, by where they come from, so the cluster a smell sits in is itself a piece of evidence.
If you can place a smell in the tertiary ring, you have already learned something about the wine’s age before you have named the descriptor. That is the whole reason to use a structured lexicon rather than reaching for whatever adjective arrives first.
Using it while you taste
Do not go looking for descriptors on the wheel while the glass is in front of you. Smell first, say whatever comes, and only then check the wheel to sharpen the word you reached for. Used the other way round it becomes a vocabulary test, and vocabulary tests do not build palates.
The clusters are more useful than the individual descriptors in the early weeks. Getting to “black fruit” reliably is worth more than guessing between blackcurrant and blackberry, and the exams reward the category far more consistently than they reward the specific.
Pair it with the Level 3 tasting sheet for structured practice, or with the deductive grid if you are working toward the Court of Master Sommeliers.
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Common questions
By origin rather than by smell. The inner ring splits aromas into primary (from the grape and fermentation), secondary (from winemaking), and tertiary (from age). That is how the WSET Systematic Approach groups them, and it is far more useful than an alphabetical list because the group tells you something about the wine.
Primary aromas come from the grape itself and from fermentation: fruit, floral, herbaceous, and pungent spice notes. Secondary come from winemaking: yeast and lees character, malolactic conversion, and oak. Tertiary come from age, whether that is deliberate oxidation, fruit developing toward dried and cooked, or true bottle age.
Because in aged Riesling it is a hallmark rather than a fault. It sits under bottle age for whites, alongside honey, toast, and mushroom. Knowing which unusual smells are development and which are damage is most of what separates a confident taster from a nervous one.
Not on the wheel itself, but yes on the printable sheet below it. Half of every 'I cannot place this' is really a fault, so the sheet lists the common ones with what each actually smells like: cork taint, oxidation, volatile acidity, reduction, Brettanomyces, lightstrike, and refermentation.
The printable version is the full lexicon as tables rather than the circle, because a wheel printed on office paper is beautiful and unreadable. The tables carry every cluster and every descriptor, which is what you actually need next to a glass.