Lucie is writing this blog post. Steve can smell all the aromas in a glass of wine but can’t smell perfume!
We are both very strong on the following advice: please everyone, guys and gals, do not travel with your bottle of perfume, cologne or after-shave when you go wine tasting. Leave it at home when you go to Wine Country. Perfume detracts from your tasting experience as well as that of those around you.
The idea of going wine tasting is to taste and smell the wines. Perfume blocks all the wonderful aromas of what has been poured in your glass. And since most of what we humans taste comes from our sense of smell, you don’t get the true flavor of the wine either.
Recently, we were at Joseph Phelps Vineyards in St. Helena. While they are undergoing renovations at the winery, they were offering tastings under a marquee, outside besides the vineyard, below the winery. Phelps is one of our favorite wineries in Napa Valley When we reserved for our wine tasting, we were not told that the tasting room and patio where we had been many times before was being renovated. It was a surprise but not a good one.
Worst of all, there was a woman standing beside us at the bar wearing such a powdery perfume, I had to move away from her. Unfortunately the scent of her perfume was all around, even if we were outside; imagine what it would have been like indoors. Some smaller wineries have very small tasting rooms; her perfume would have been totally overwhelming.
Smelling that perfume made our tasting experience so unpleasant that it completely ruined Lucie’s visit, unable to get the bouquet and the taste of the wines being served… because of that perfume!
We insist that it is not only women we’re talking about, but men also. Leave the Old Spice at home, guys. When you taste wine, what you smell is as important as what you have in your mouth, so let’s all enjoy it to the maximum.
Cheers!