Wine
Barry Smith
Waiting for the bouquet
Why are the aromas of well-aged wines so appealing? Normally, we favour fresh smells: newly baked bread, ripe fruit. Yet when it comes to finer quality wines we like the mature smell of graceful degradation. What are the older wine aromas that we pick up on and why are they so prized?
As wines age their aromas develop greater complexity, readily discernible on the nose. These merit a separate term in professional wine circles: bouquet. Many people use the terms aroma and bouquet interchangeably, but Emile Peynaud, the father of modern oenology, reserved the term bouquet for the distinctive harmony of odours that is only achieved with time.