Some refer to the smell of fruit, hay and ripe apricots. Others talk of the horse blankets, barnyard funk, pencil shavings and leather, just to name a few of the more peculiar descriptions of wine aromas.
But now there is scientific evidence to suggest that wine buffs may just be talking rubbish or at least that they greatly overestimate their own ability to pin down a wine's particular aroma.
Yesterday a US team published evidence that people smell the world differently because of their genes.
The findings suggest that those who claim to pick up rich aromas from fine wines may owe more to genetics than to any great expertise.
The basis of the research, by scientists at Rockefeller University in New York and published yesterday in the journal Nature, is a study of how 400 people reacted to more than 60 smells.
It reveals that small changes in a single gene – identified as OR7D4 – can cause a person to perceive a key ingredient of male body odour and urine as smelling like urine or, most remarkably, vanilla.
Although it has long been suspected that the sensing of body odour is genetically determined, this study is the first to identify variations in a single gene that account for a large part of why people perceive it so differently.
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