With wine, the flavor should follow the aroma. So, whatever you smell is what you will taste. The following content is accessible for members only, please sign in.

This is one of the dimensions in which wine is not like food. With food, if you smell, say, a steak, you are 100% certain you are going to taste steak flavor. But in wine, flavor does not always follow from aroma. You might smell, say, cherries, but when you taste the wine, its flavor is reminiscent of licorice, espresso, and damp earth. Many wine drinkers assume this schism denotes a poorly made wine. But the opposite is true. A divergence between aroma and taste is far more likely to happen with great wine which, by definition, is complex. With a great wine, a kaleidoscope of aromas and flavors reveal themselves sequentially over time, and the sensations aren’t necessarily related or predictable. Part of the “head trip” of a bottle of great wine is that it can be completely fascinating over the course of a two-hour dinner.