I hope this will put your mind at rest, when someone puts their nose to a glass of wine and rattles off a fruit vegetable salad. When it leaves you scratching your head, and asking how does a wine evoke such flavors as diverse as cherry, licorice, chocolate, vanilla, tobacco, butter, leather. minerals, earthiness, mushroom honeysuckle, and honey?

Let me unfold these mysteries to you. Here are the elements that affect the wine in different ways. If you sniff and smell, blackberries and your friend smells melon. Neither of you is wrong, and here is why. Everbody’s snout develops a learning pattern of recognition as we each live our different existence. So, it is only natural that you each smell something different. Just relax and enjoy your wine as you smell and taste it and let the other guy do the same.

Now to the making of wine and how to achieve those flavors and aromas we just spoke about. For great wine or even good wine, you need grapes, experience, skill and a good deal of luck. Luck being in that year’s terroir. Most winemakers think along the traditional line, but some like to treat something new, unique. The most common flavor characteristics are alcohol content, acid, tannin. oak. fruit aromas, and flavors, body, and sweetness that affect the wine.

Alcolhol: When fresh grapes are used, you often get a slightly lower sugar content, result in a wine that is less than full-bodied: or too dry.

Acid: Acid is what gives wine its pucker power or tarte taste. It also gives structure to the wine. Tartaric coming from the grape its self, Citric acids like those in oranges and lemons, and the Malic acid from apples and pears. You can also reduce the acidity if a wine is too tart by adding Potassium carbonate.

Tannins: They are inert in all grapes, being found in the skins, seeds, and stems. They are primarily found in red wines and determined by the length of time the juice is in contact with them.

Oak: This comes from being aged during fermentation in oak cast or having oak chips added. During this period the flavor is determine by the type of oak, weather it lightly toasted or deeply toasted barrels that it is placed in.

Fruit: Some flavors occur naturally due to the variations in terroir. Others are created by adding concentrated fruit juices before fermentation.

Sweetness: If a wine is too dry, you can over come this by adding concentrated juices, liquid sugar’s combined with potassium sorbate, or sorbic acid to stop re-fermentation.

A brilliant wine from Hawk’s Bay, New Zealand brandishes a ninety-three rating. A Kiwi Sauvignon with real class is sadly a limited edition. It is a terroir-driven wine that showcases its location and fermented in oak puncheons for six months. This aging gives it a creamy spice complexity of tropical fruit and grassy hints threaded through a saline mineraliness. All this adds up to a crisp acidity with an elegant structure. Two-thousand and eighteen is a worthy vintage as well. At twenty-five dollars a bottle, it is still a good value.

This is another wine from the Lodi region and is a lush stunner. This Cab Franc is complex with red fruits, medium tannins, mildly dry yet remarkably smooth. It dances in your mouth like a samba and finishes with a smooth finish that lingers. This wine pairs nicely with pork, pasta, poultry, and cheeses. At fourteen dollars a bottle, my advice is to stock before the word gets out how good it is.

Another gem from the Lode region, and it stands up to savory foods like steak. Though rare to find this single grape, it thrives in the Lodi district of California. It is a young wine you can drink now or cellar for a couple of years, which will turn it into a great wine, bumping it several points to the upper nineties. It is smooth and layered with flavors, full-bodied, vibrant purple color with mostly black fruits on the nose, and chocolate flavor on the finish. The alcohol, acidity, and tannins are well balanced. Quail Hollow’s Petit Verdot is a rare find and a great bargain at nineteen dollars.

Aerating is exposing the wine to the air, causing a chemical reaction that changes the wine’s flavor and dispels unpleasant aromas in some cases. During this period of letting the wine breathe, two essential processes occur, evaporation and oxidation, improving the quality of some wines. Evaporation transitions in some liquid to vapor, and let volatile compounds evaporate like ethanol from the wine enhancing its taste, Using an aerator is also another method of accomplishing this, but not as effective while quicker. Yet, too much oxidation ruins any wine. All this leaves us still in a quandary as to aerate or not and if so how long.

First, let me state that there are no absolute rules to this process, only general guidelines that I Can give you. Sometimes it boils down to personal taste. The age, type of grape, and color are the most common factors in making most decisions, but not all, leaving the murkiness in the decision making. Swirling the wine in your glass is particularly important for younger, tannic wines. On the on the hand, older, ten years and up wines are more delicate and tend to deteriorate much faster.

Frist, let’s start with white wines. Should they be aerated? As a rule, no, you can open and drink. However, when it comes to Chardonnay and Albarino, this changes. An aerator or a fifthteen to twenty minute decant will improve them. Age of a wine is another telling factor with those aged four or more years often needing little air.

Next, we’ll take the red wines. The drier the wine, the more lime it needs to complete this process. The higher the tannins, the same applies. Young reds, especially those high in tannins need time to breathe, differing in time from a minimum of a half-hour to an hour. Some like Tropic Malbec and Saldo Zinfandel can take up to two hours to achieve their finest quality. Older wines, those ten years or older, should be opened and drunk in the same day. To eliminate the deteriorating of your unfinished wine is relatively simple. You can either buy an inexpensive wine pump for eight-twelve dollars with its rubber corks, or a wine opener that replaces the original cork back in the bottle, I will warn you now that you can talk to ten different wine experts and receive slight variations from all of them. These differences come from two things, traditional snobbery and individual taste.

This is a big bold and delectable Cab with a finish that both surprises and delights. It is a rich complex mouthful of black fruit mellowing in mid-palate with black current, vanilla, and light oakiness on its way to a smooth finish that lingers only to explode in a light white peppery tap-dance on your tongue. Like its label, it is distinct, brave, and fierce in its deliciousness and creativity. With its eighteen-twenty-one dollar price tag it is easy on the pocketbook for quality Cab drinkers.

This wine guy considers it to be the best Malbec value on the market, producing one of the most consistent wines from Mendoza, Argentina, or anywhere else. It is complex with its velvety layers of black fruit, and red plums paired with balanced tannins. Its tantalizing aromas of violet, spice, and vanilla entice, leading to a smooth finish, allowing it to be paired with practically everything. Alamos comes from the foothills of the Andes and makes a bold, smooth, lasting taste in almost all wine drinkers mouths. It’s nine-ten dollar price makes it a must in every collection.

This is a dazzling wine from Swartland South Africa by one of Frances’ premier winemakers, Vincent Careme. A real crowd-pleaser which delivers lush notes of citrus and honeysuckle balanced by a seamless acidity. It soft texture, and intense acidity with flavors of yellow apple, lime, and honeysuckle give this wine perfect balance, especially with its minerality elements in harmony, leaving a savory finish that lingers. It is a bargain at sixteen dollars a bottle.

The Bandol region overlooks the Mediterranean and is considered my many to produce the finest Rose wines from its rich limestone soil. I is here the Mourvedre grape thrives in its sunbaked foothills to the shore with its cooling sea breezes. Originally from Spain, this thick-skinned grape makes for a gamey wine that you would normally enjoy in the winter with stew and crustaceans, Strangely enough, it also works well with Roses, when genteelly pressed and limited contact with the skins, seeds, and stems. These Roses often bring 50 dollars or more while G Rose comes in at 18 dollars a bottle. G is a blend of Mourvedre, Cinsault, and Crenache with a pungent mineral-accented citrus fruit, red berry, and nectarine aromas that reveal a subtle honeysuckle flourish. Its silky focus on the palate reveals tangerine and floral pastille flavors with an added touch of quinine. They give G aq long penetrating finish you are sure to love.

Pomerol Wines tug at my heartstrings. Coming from one of France’s smallest wine growing regions, which produces some of France’s most renowned wines. This wine saves me from what my wife rightfully calls madness and my love of Chateau Georges Pomerol at 90 dollars a bottle. Chateau Haut-Surget Lalande is more than a respectable challenger at 27 dollars a bottle and boasting the same 93-piont rating. Pomerol wines are some of the most sought after in the world. Some going as high as 3500 dollars a bottle with ratings of only 2-3 points higher, making this wine an outstanding value. This wine will dazzle you with it deep rich color, and ripe plum notes and spicy aromas. Its ultra-smooth texture is silken with buttery tannins that melt on your palate wrapping into a soul-satisfying finish.