Aromas, Flavors and Textures

Join our reporter as she discovers the fascinating world of tastings: wine, tea, olive oil, chocolate and cigars.

TEXT: Soledad Castro
illustration: alejandra acosta

I’ve just asked my friend to go buy a good Malbec, hopefully a 2001.

We used to be happy with “a nice wine and some good cheese.” Now, I need my Malbec with Portobello mushrooms. And you can’t fool me with tea made using shock-chlorinated water or extra virgin olive oil that isn’t so virginal. I won’t mix ripened cheeses with complex wines, drink a Cabernet over 22 degrees Celsius or eat chocolate with red wine. I’ve spent two weeks sampling whites, rosés and reds, learning to distinguish among scents of hay, plum and mango, eating green apples between sips of different oils, discussing the viscosity of beer foams, savoring Belgian chocolates, studying the cut of a leg of Serrano ham, buying coffee grounds and toying with the smoke from a Havana cigar.

Lucky me.

What Smell Reminds You of Your Childhood?

The smell of freshly cut grass or wet earth during rainfall. The aroma of a peeled orange or ground coffee. All of us associate childhood memories with certain smells. Latin Americans surveyed by the BBC remember the smell of new shoe leather on the first day of school, sharpened pencils, castor oil, new toys, cinnamon in Grandma’s kitchen, popcorn, watermelon slices and freshly baked bread.

The sense of smell is so complex that of the 35,000 genes that make up the human genome, a thousand correspond to smell. Professors Richard Axel of Columbia University and Linda Buck of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2004 for this discovery. They determined that we are able to distinguish among and remember over 10,000 smells.

I’ve been under the wing of a true “Super Nose,” Spanish sommelier Pascual Ibáñez, an adviser to the Club de Amantes de Vino (Wine Lovers’ Club) at the Hotel Ritz Carlton Santiago, an expert in the sensorial evaluation of products and head of the Escuela de los Sentidos (School of the Senses), where he convinces me that he can turn anyone into an expert taster.

As a potential master taster, I take careful notes. Ibáñez lifts his glass, which contains a Montes 2005 Fumé Blanc. First, he looks at it from above, studying the wine’s brilliance. He mentions its greenish highlights as he looks at it from the side and from below. Then, he sticks his nose in the glass, letting the yellow libation fill his lungs with its hints of fresh pear.

Once again, Ibáñez takes the glass and swirls around the wine inside, making it dance without letting a drop splash anywhere, remarking on the herbal and lemon-tinged aromas. Anxious, he swirls the wine around harder, clutching it while murmuring, “light touches of saline, smoke and sweet almonds…it’s very lively!”

Then, and only then, does Ibáñez imbibe a little, churning the wine around with his tongue, noting the freshness and pushing its vapors towards the back part of his nose. He enjoys the buccal contact and the aftertaste as he concentrates on the residual flavors: more smoke.

Ibáñez consciously uses all five of his senses, the only tools we have to perceive and evaluate the quality of what we consume. For example, hearing the sound of the wine in motion tells us whether it’s viscous or thin. Without touch, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the sensation of chocolate melting in our mouths. We all know about the eyes’ relationship to the stomach. And, of course, taste and smell take center stage at mealtime.

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