If you can’t come up with anything other than “wine” or “yummy” when asked to describe what's in your glass , you are NOT alone! Plenty of people that love wine are the first to admit they stink at identifying what they are smelling and tasting in the glass. Or they question WHY it even matters.

I'm giving you a very quick and easy tool to better approach what’s in the glass, so you can be better at knowing WHAT you like and WHY you like it! (Or why you DON’T!)

We are using the acronym FEW to identify:

FRUIT, EARTH and WOOD in wines 

Where these things come from and why you should care

Get the Wine Aroma wheel here

Try my 2021 Sollevato Sangiovese here. Its F E  w. 

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Nikki:

... you know, this can be done very quickly, especially the more you do it, you'll get faster at it. But then my brain takes it to another level. And I actually think about uppercase versus lowercase, or, you know, 28 point font versus 10 point font. So I might say, okay, I'm smelling this wine. Is it fruity? Yes or no?

Yes. It's actually very fruity and the fruitiness is like the main or the only thing that I'm noticing about the wine. I'm not getting any earthiness or any woody or oakiness. In my mind, that wine is a capital F and a lowercase e and a lowercase w.

Very often, I will be enjoying wine with friends and family, people that, you know, admittedly say that they like wine and they enjoy wine. But then they also will be very quick to say, but I don't know anything about it. So when I guide people through, okay, put your nose in the glass, what do you smell?

What do you taste? It's very often that people struggle to say more than grapes or wine. or yumminess. So today I'm going to introduce you to a very simple but very helpful concept using an acronym to help you better identify what you're smelling and tasting in your wine and more importantly to better understand what you like and why you like it so that you can make better choices when selecting the things that you want to enjoy.

If you haven't already downloaded my wine tips cheat sheet, it is full of things like the concept that we're going to talk about today. It's a free download and I'll send it right to your inbox. And you can do that at sipwithnicki. com forward slash resource. Here we go.

If you ever find yourself holding a beautiful glass of wine that you're very excited to smell and taste and you're like, okay, I'm going to get better at this. I am going to stick my nose in here and be able to call out a list of all of these notes of this and that, that this wine is giving me. And you stick your nose in there and you're like, it smells like.

Wine, you are not alone. And if you listened to the previous episode, number 13, with Dr. Hobie Wedler, who is a sensory expert and a PhD in organic chemistry and blind, Uh, you hear him so eloquently put his nose into a glass and be able to just come up with this gorgeous list of things that he is smelling and then tasting.

And um, if you're thinking, gosh, I could never, ever be able to do that. understand and describe wine like that, then, uh, this episode is for you. So I want to give you a few, F E W, we're going to talk about the importance of that, a few, um, really simple and easy tips on how to develop a vocabulary, um, around what's in the glass.

And You might be wondering why is this even important? Can't I just drink my wine and enjoy it? Yes, of course. But two things. First off, if you Are able to notice and understand and appreciate the different things that you're smelling and you're tasting in wine. I think it just elevates the overall enjoyment.

And you guys know I am hashtag Joy Junkie. I am here to help you get more joy out of these things, and I think it's just a better experience when you can understand a little bit, but more importantly. Once you can identify things that you're smelling and tasting in wine, it helps you understand why you like what you like, why you don't like what you don't like, and then you can be better at picking out things that are going to bring you more.

Joy, see what I did there. Um, so really it's just a helpful, you know, guidance in shopping in the store and ordering in a restaurant if you know I prefer this or that or not this or that. So we're going to work on putting words and putting vocabulary to the things that you can experience in your class.

And we're going to use the acronym FEW, F E W. Now I have to start by saying. I don't know where I got this from. I don't think that I created this. I don't think I'm that clever, but I, for the life of me, cannot remember if it was an instructor in one of my wine certifications or a publication or a tasting somewhere where I picked up this F E W F U, um, acronym.

So if you are listening to this and it came from you, Please reach out, send me an email, Nikki at SipWithNikki. com, and let me know so that I can give you a proper shout out so I can give you a reference in the bibliography. I am not trying to take credit for this, but um, gosh, I was googling it last night in preparation of recording this just so that I could give credit, and I can't even find this on the interweb.

So it came from somewhere, um, And it's super easy and super helpful, and I've introduced this concept to probably hundreds of people over the last decade when guiding them in wine tastings. And they seem to really like it and find it helpful, which is why I wanted to share it with all of you. So, Few. F E W.

F is fruit. E is earth and W is wood. So when you have a glass of any type of wine, red, white, sparkling, cheap, expensive, I don't care what it is, use this overlay of F E W to think about first what you smell and then what you taste. So we're going to start with the F, fruit. Easy to narrow this down. Ask yourself when you're smelling this wine, is it fruity?

Yes or no? And it can be a yes or no question. Now, if the answer is yes, then we kind of do a little flow chart and we say, okay, it's fruity. What kind of fruity am I perceiving in my glass? Is it berries like cherries and strawberries and red and purple fruits? Or is it like citrus? Like, oh, I'm getting lemon and lime.

Maybe it's another category that we call stone fruit, basically anything with a P. pit, right? So that could be a peach, it could be a pear, it could be apple, things with seeds. Um, so that's the first thing you do. Fruity, yes or no, what type of fruit, and then you can get a little more specific and start to narrow in on the type of fruit, okay?

Now, side note, what causes this, because I think we've already covered in earlier episodes, but maybe you're just jumping in and meeting me for the first time in this episode, welcome. But we've talked about how when we say, oh, this wine is hints of cherry and blackberry and plums and citrus. Those things are not literally in the wine.

That's the magic of wine. There's grapes that have gone through fermentation and through, uh, the wonderful world of chemistry, the positive application of chemistry. There are lots of compounds that exist in wine through that fermentation process. And they're the same ones that exist in cherries and apples and lemons, which is why our brain recognizes them and says, Oh, I smell that.

And I know what that is. That's cherry. Okay. That's where that comes from. The things are not really in the wine. That's the magic of wine. Now, what is going to determine how your wine's fruitiness is expressing in the glass is three things. First, the grape, different types of grapes. present as more fruity in the glass than others.

Um, Zinfandel, big, beautiful California's red grape, is a very fruit driven grape, right? It makes very fruity wines. But Syrah, which is another grape that I love, is generally going to seem less fruity and more kind of earthy in the glass, right? So that just comes with time and understanding, um, certain grapes, uh, will have just more fruit character.

The second thing that's going to drive fruitiness in the glass is the region and where it's come from. Um, and in previous episodes we talked about, um, old world versus new world, right? So old world wine regions is basically, um, Europe, Um, so France and Italy and Germany, and then the New World is here, the U.

S., California where I am, a lot of the Southern Hemisphere like Australia, South Africa, Chile, things like that. Well, there, um, there are differences in climate and if we're just going to keep this really simple. Okay. Warmer climate, California, more sunshine, California, is generally going to drive more ripeness in the grape, which generally is going to lead them to have more fruitiness than the counterpart of the same grape growing in a cooler region, right?

So region is also going to determine the intensity of the fruitiness. And then finally age. Um, again, if you have not listened to previous episode with Dr. Hobie about seeing flavor, we taste four wines in there and we talk a lot about, you know, guessing the age of the wine in the glass by the characters that we're getting.

And so generally speaking, when wines are younger, The fruitiness is high. And when I say younger, meaning those grapes were picked more recently and put in the bottle more recently, right? So like when you're shopping in the store right now, a lot of the wines that you'll see on the shelves for white wines are going to be really recent because the process is a little shorter to get most white wines in the bottle.

Younger, more recent. Made wines, recently made wines are generally going to have, uh, a higher fruitiness about them and that subsides as the wine is aging in a bottle in your wine fridge or your cellar. Okay? So those are the three things that are going to affect the fruitiness of the wine. So you stick your nose in the glass, you ask yourself, is this fruity?

Yes or no? And if yes, continue. What type of fruits am I getting? What color are those fruits? What category of fruits is it? And is it ripe fruit? Like wow, this is very blackberry and it's like a blackberry that literally just fell off the tree in the summer onto the hot pavement and it is ripe like jam.

Or maybe it's dried. Right? Dried fruits have a very different, um, intensity of fruitiness than ripe fruits. And that's another character that you could think of. So that is the F, fruitiness. The E is for earthy. And for the simplicity of this model of the FEW acronym, I'm going to basically say it.

Anything else that you smell and taste in wine that's not fruity, we're going to put in the E, earthy, category. So the obvious things like, oh, it smells earthy. It smells like wet earth. It smells like leaves. It smells like, um, mushrooms. It smells like pine. pepper. Um, but also things like, um, tobacco, which comes from the earth, right?

Tea comes from the earth. Um, and I'm also going to put, um, floral, right? Like I'm smelling, um, violets or roses or honeysuckle. We're basically going to say for simplicity, anything that's not fruit, we're going to lump into the earthy category of the wine. And guess what's going to drive how earthy a particular wine is?

Same thing as in the fruit category. The grape. Certain grapes are more earthy than others. Syrah, as I mentioned a moment ago, is generally less fruity, more earthy. Um, Pinot Noir, depending on where it's grown, uh, especially if it's grown in cooler climates. Like California, Pinot Noir is very fruit driven because we're warm, but go north of here into some of our neighboring states, like Oregon, a lot cooler, and the Pinot Noir is going to be more earthy.

And then finally, W. W is for wood, the wood character or woodiness of the wine. Well, Nikki, where the heck does that come from? Generally comes from barrels. We've talked in previous episodes about, uh, aging wine in barrels and why you do or don't, and then also where the barrel's from, France versus American versus Hungarian, and also the age of the barrel, newer barrel.

Stronger oakiness, reuse and reuse and reuse that barrel, very little, quote, oakiness being added to the wine. Okay. But wines that have aged in oak barrels, which is very traditional and very common, and this can be for whites and especially even more, more widespread and common for red wines. If a wine spent time in a barrel.

And that barrel was new. First or second time ever holding wine inside of it. It's going to impart wood and oakiness where it literally smells. Sometimes you'll be like, ooh, it smells like cedar. You know, like when you get those cedar, um, blocks for your closet. Um, and then also in this category, what wood or oak imparts into wine is baking spices, clove, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg.

If it's a heavily toasted barrel, you might get mocha, toffee. Uh, if it's an American oak barrel, sometimes it's even giving things like coconut, like toasty coconut, right? We're going to put all of those things because they're caused by the wood that held the wine. in the W category. So when you stick your nose in that glass, you ask yourself, am I perceiving any woodiness or oakiness to this wine?

And that can be a yes or a no question as well. So that's it. F E W, fruit, Now, to take this a step further, and this is just how my brain works, when I am evaluating a wine, and you can do this in 30 seconds, I mean, my explanation here, obviously, is a little bit longer than that. But once you are doing this, you pick up a glass, you smell it, am I getting F, am I getting E, am I getting W?

Then you taste it. Does it confirm the F, E, W? Yes or no? Um, it can, you know, this can be done very quickly, especially the more you do it, you'll get faster at it, but then my brain takes it to another level and I actually think about uppercase versus lowercase or, you know, 28 point font versus 10 point font.

So I might say, okay, I'm smelling this wine. Is it fruity? Yes or no? Yes. Yes. It's actually very fruity and the fruitiness is like the main or the only thing that I'm noticing about the wine. I'm not getting any earthiness or any woody or oakiness. In my mind, that wine is a capital F and a lowercase e and a lowercase w.

Then I might pick up a glass of Syrah from Washington State and I'm like, is it fruity? Yes or no? No, I'm not smelling fruity. It smells great, but fruit is not the first thing that's, you know, jumping out of my brain here when I smell or taste this wine, but man, it does smell like olives. Tapenade and soy sauce and pepper and bay and eucalyptus, right?

Well, then I'm going to say that that wine is a lowercase 10 point font F and an uppercase E. That's maybe a larger font. That's just how I think about that in the wine. So hopefully this is helpful for you. Um, to use this acronym F E W just to start to think about some easy and obvious differences in the wine, because here's the whole point.

Here's the whole benefit for you. Once you know, Oh, I really like a capital F in my wine, right? If you listen to this sipping with my sisters episode, you'll hear my older sister Dana say she loves a big California fruit bomb. She likes a capital F in her wine. Where my younger sister, Amanda, prefers some wines with age on them, a little more subtle, and generally from European winegrowing regions, well, she's going to be more of a lowercase F and a capital E.

And then woodiness, most people kind of know if they like oakiness about wine or not, right? You either Enjoy that vanilla toasty cedary note in your wine, or you would prefer to do without it. And once you know that, this will help you when you're in total wine and the very helpful, uh, customer service, uh, educator comes up to you and says, Hey, can I help you?

You can say, like, I know that I like really fruit driven wines without a lot of oak. I like a capital F with a lowercase w, right? Is how you can be thinking about that. Another tool that is helpful is something called the Wine Aroma Wheel, and you can go to WineAromaWheel. com. This is something that actually one of my professors who, um, is from UC Davis, Dr.

Ann Noble, she taught one of my classes during my wine certification. She's created this Wine Aroma Wheel and you can order it off her website. It's, I don't know, 10 bucks, 15 bucks. It's laminated. We have them all over the winery. Um, where I work and it literally starts from the center with like fruitiness and then, you know, the next circle out kind of hones in on is it berries or citrus or the things that we're talking about.

So it's a great visual little tool that, you know, if you're having fun and tasting wine with friends, you can pull out your wine aroma wheel, um, and use that to, to guide you where then it's more of process of elimination, right? process of elimination. You can look at that wine wheel and say, Nope, it's not cherry.

It's not strawberry and it's not currant. And you know, that's really helpful. So winearomawheel. com. So I hope that you've learned a few things from our lesson here. And again, use this to understand, appreciate, and make better decisions in selecting wines that are going to bring you joy.

So there you have it, F E W, Fruit Earth Wood. Think about this next time you are tasting wine, sharing wine with other people, and then shopping for wine or ordering in a restaurant. Feel free to not only share this concept with friends and family, but share this episode. And any platform where you might be listening to this, there should be an option to click and share as a text message or copy the link.

And it's definitely a fruit driven with just as much floral and spice and earthiness and tobacco. So I'll put the link in the show notes we can ship to most states. Don't forget to like and follow the podcast. If you could leave us a rating or a review, and of course you can always say thank you for the content that you're enjoying by supporting the podcast link in the show notes, buy me a glass of wine.

I promise to use my few acronym as I enjoy it. Um, but at any rate, uh, hope that you enjoy that you learned and that you sip well.

Kathryn:

Sip with Nikki is hosted by Nikki Lamberti. Production and sound mixing by Katherine Bryan. You can always send your listener questions to Nikki at SipWithNikki. com or find us on the Sip With Nikki Facebook page. Or visit us on Instagram at Nikki Lamberti. Thanks for listening. Until next time, sip well, everyone.

This is Sip with Nikki, a production of Take 10 Studios.