Mama's new toy came in...

...and it's not in my night table drawer, so get your mind out of the gutter.

No, my pets, it's my new wine wheel, see?


(Update Oct. 6: The Wine Aroma Wheel is Copyright 2002, A C Noble. Photograph Copyright 2010 B. Rowlandson. No part of the Wine aroma wheel or this photograph may be reproduced without permission).

What is a wine wheel, you ask? It's a clever little laminated, colour-coded wheel that helps you to describe wines you're tasting. The inner-circle of the wheel has general descriptors like Fruity, Herbaceous, Nutty, Caramel etc. The centre ring breaks down those descriptors a little further into more specific categories, ie. Fruity-->Citrus/Berry/Tree Fruit/Tropical Fruit/Cooked Fruit. The final outer ring pinpoints actual flavours, ie. Fruity-->Berry-->Blackberry/Raspberry/Strawberry.

How handy is that? If tasting wine leaves you struggling to articulate clear descriptions whilst floating on a nebulous cloud of sensory memory, this wheel can help you pinpoint specific flavours very quickly. Of course the word you're looking for may not be on the wheel (plum didn't make their list! Weird!), but you can still get a ballpark idea of which category your wine fits into. And may I point out that this tool was cheap and cheerful--I think I paid ten bucks for it. Seems to me like a more economical way to train our wino brains that a certain $400 aroma kit, non?

You can go look for yourself at www.innovinum.com.

'Til next time,

Barb