At Le Nez’s booth at a Swiss wine fair, facilitator Julien Bosio uncaps a small bottle and holds it under the nose of a visitor. He watches expectantly as the woman grapples with trying to put a name on the smell. ‘’Citrus,’’ she ventures as he nods encouragingly, and flashes a big smile as she refines that with ‘’lemon!’’
She’s right about the contents of the second bottle – spices – but despite his coaching (‘’gingerbread?’’) fails to pinpoint ‘’cloves.’’ A third attempt has her grappling with melon and peaches before she triumphantly hits on the correct reply – ‘’apricots.’’
The woman is hooked, already enquiring about the price of the 54-smell masterkit Nez du Vin which retails for 300 Euros, some 440 US dollars, on Le Nez’s website.
Wine Vocabulary
As Bosio points out, these kits are not new; they have a track record of nearly thirty years of perfecting the olfactory acuity of wine professionals and amateurs alike. They are the brainchild of Burgundian Jean Lenoir, a passionate oenophile who believes fine wine is an art form that belongs right up there with music and painting. Le Nez du Vin was his answer to finding a common vocabulary that people can use to describe wine accurately by learning to isolate and pinpoint – just as a master-perfumer, or professional ‘’nose’’, can – all the layers of different notes that add up to one great bouquet.
The company that grew out of this endeavor, headquartered in Carnoux en Provence in the southern part of France, now produces eight wine kits including an introductory model featuring six basic wine smells: grapefruit, pear, strawberry, black currant, violets, and toast.
Other models address the basic smells in red and white wines including champagne. One is devoted to identifying the smells in wines aged in new oak, and another to wine defects – such as when it is corked. Newly launched is a kit devoted to rosé wines. In the masterkit, which besides its 54 vials and book has flash cards tying the smells to specific wines, the palette of smells is divided into fruit, nut, floral, vegetal, spicy, animal and toasted categories, ranging from litchi, almonds and roses to cedar, saffron, leather and smoke.
Nez du Vin Has Made Its Mark
Among European wine professionals, it is not unusual to hear ‘’I know everything I know about wine’’ attributed to Le Nez kits. Also praised in specialized wine publications, the kits have met equally with the approbation of the general print press. According to the Observer Review, it is ‘’pretty, nifty, executive toy and party game” while the New York Times writes that ‘’recognizing the aromas is more difficult than it sounds, it's like meeting an old friend on the street and not being able to remember his name; Le Nez du Vin is a great icebreaker, the minute you open the lid, everyone wants to get into the act ..."
Le Nez states that the smells in the bottles stay on track and reliable for ‘’at least five years’’. Besides French and English, the Nez du Vin masterkit has been published in German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Chinese and Japanese. Its crimson cloth-bound box is in the tradition of the grand édition de luxe – limited edition books with original prints and sometimes drawings by well-known artists – although it weighs considerably more: 3.75 kg, or about 8 1/3 lbs.
 |
