What Is the Nose in Wine Tasting? How to Smell Wine
Learn what 'the nose' means in wine tasting, how to properly smell wine, and how to identify aromas that reveal a wine's grape variety, age, and quality.
The nose refers to the aromas and scents you detect when smelling a wine. It is the first step in wine evaluation and can reveal grape variety, age, winemaking technique, and potential faults.
The nose is where wine tasting truly begins. Before you ever take a sip, the aromas rising from your glass can tell you an extraordinary amount about what you are about to drink: the grape variety, where it was grown, how it was made, how old it is, and whether it is in good condition. Learning to evaluate the nose is arguably the most important skill in wine tasting.
What Is the Nose?
In wine terminology, “the nose” refers to the complete aromatic profile of a wine as perceived through your sense of smell. When a sommelier or wine critic talks about assessing the nose, they mean carefully smelling the wine to identify its various aromatic compounds, categorize them, and draw conclusions about the wine’s identity and quality.
The human nose can detect thousands of different aromatic compounds, far more than the palate can distinguish through taste alone. In fact, most of what we perceive as “flavor” when drinking wine is actually aroma detected by olfactory receptors as volatile compounds travel from the mouth to the nasal passage during a process called retronasal olfaction. This is why wine tastes dramatically diminished when you have a cold: your sense of smell is compromised.
Why the Nose Matters
Evaluating the nose is the most informative step in wine tasting. Skilled tasters can identify a wine’s grape variety, region of origin, vintage, and winemaking methods from the nose alone, which is why blind tasting exams place so much emphasis on aromatic analysis.
The nose also reveals wine faults before you taste them. Cork taint (TCA contamination) produces a musty, wet cardboard smell that is immediately apparent on the nose. Reduction creates an unpleasant sulfurous, struck-match, or rotten-egg aroma. Volatile acidity manifests as a sharp vinegar or nail polish remover smell. Brett (Brettanomyces) adds barnyard, sweaty horse, or band-aid odors. Catching these faults on the nose saves you from an unpleasant mouthful.
For WSET assessment, the nose evaluation is one of the most heavily weighted components of the Systematic Approach to Tasting. You are expected to identify specific aromas, categorize them as primary (grape-derived), secondary (winemaking-derived), or tertiary (aging-derived), and use this information to form conclusions about the wine’s identity and quality.
The Nose in Practice
Proper technique for evaluating the nose involves several steps. First, look at the wine and note its color and intensity, as these provide context for what you are about to smell. Then bring the glass to your nose without swirling and take a gentle sniff. This first impression catches the most volatile aromas, the lightest compounds that lift off the surface most readily.
Next, swirl the glass to increase the wine’s surface area and release more aromatic compounds. Take another series of short sniffs rather than one long inhale. Short sniffs are more effective because they deliver fresh samples of air to your olfactory receptors, while a long inhale can actually fatigue them.
As you smell, try to identify specific aromas rather than general impressions. Instead of thinking “this smells fruity,” try to name the specific fruit: is it lemon, grapefruit, green apple, peach, cherry, blackcurrant, or plum? Instead of “spicy,” is it black pepper, cinnamon, clove, or vanilla? The more specific your descriptors, the more useful the information.
Common primary aromas (from the grape) include citrus fruits, stone fruits, tropical fruits, red berries, black fruits, floral notes (rose, violet, blossom), and herbal notes (green pepper, eucalyptus, mint). Common secondary aromas (from winemaking) include vanilla, toast, smoke, and coconut from oak, butter and cream from malolactic fermentation, and biscuit or brioche from lees contact. Common tertiary aromas (from aging) include leather, tobacco, mushroom, earth, dried fruit, and honey.
Certain grape varieties have signature aromatic profiles that become recognizable with practice. Sauvignon Blanc is known for its distinctive notes of cut grass, gooseberry, and grapefruit. Gewurztraminer exudes lychee, rose petal, and Turkish delight. Syrah offers black pepper, violet, and dark berry. Pinot Noir presents red cherry, raspberry, and earth. Learning these aromatic signatures is one of the most practical and rewarding aspects of wine education.
To develop your nose, smell everything in daily life with more attention. When you cut a lemon, note the specific citrus aroma. When you pass a flower garden, identify individual floral scents. When you cook, pay attention to the aromas of herbs, spices, and cooking processes. This everyday practice builds the aromatic library in your memory that you draw upon when tasting wine.
Explore with Sommo
Building your ability to evaluate the nose takes guided practice. Sommo’s structured tasting notes walk you through a systematic aromatic assessment, helping you identify and categorize what you smell. Our WSET study tools reinforce the vocabulary and recognition skills that make nose evaluation more confident and precise with every glass you taste.
