Training the recognition of wine aromas

Far and beyond recognizing aromas in wines is one of the most difficult things to do (at least for me personally). Sometimes it helps to smell the pure product that is described (like lime, lemon, etc), but in some cases the aromas are not that easy to recognize according to me.

Today I bumped into a technique that looks very promising for learning this aroma recognition in the userguide on www.winearomawheel.com.

I have no connection with these guys at all, I just bumped onto their site after bumping on an explanation of the German Wine Classification system which pointed to a winearomawheel applicable to German wines.

It goes something like this: take a bottle of cheap wine (with little finesse and aromas) and add some artificial aromas in different glasses. After a few hours try to recognize the different aromas that you added in each glassm when in doubt compare with a glass of unchanged cheap wine.

I haven't tried this yet, but I sure am planning to as seems like a simply but elegant way to do so.