​If you’ve ever smelled your glass of wine expecting a bouquet of raspberries, lilac, coffee and chocolate and thought: just smells like wine to me, this post is for you.

First off, know that you’re definitely not alone. Distinguishing aromas is one of the most difficult parts of the wine tasting process. Don’t despair though, this skill can be trained and improved. Here are my five tips for better distinguishing aromas in your wine!

Before we get into the tips, let’s just talk quickly about the elephant in the room. When I first started learning about wine and read that a wine had notes of pineapple, vanilla, and cinnamon I wondered if that meant the wine was made with these ingredients. How else would it have those flavors and aromas?

​Turns out, aromas found in wine are derived from chemical reactions. This means there was no pineapple (or vanilla or cinnamon for that matter) in the wine I was tasting. This is great news for wines with notes of dirt, rubber hose, or even petroleum. But why, then, do we describe the wine as having these particular aromas if they’re not actually present in the wine?