I see Stephen below has pre-empted me, I think the lay failure to distinguish between aroma and bouquet is completely logical and hopefully with common usage these will eventually be recognized as synonyms. I asked google to define bouquet and they gave me this: 3
a
: a distinctive and characteristic fragrance (as of wine)
This Abecedaria series is about fleshing out the rainbow of implications and meanings that inhere in wine and food terminology. Part of the idea is that the more we understand about how and why the words are used in certain ways, the less likely we are to associate them with snobbism or exclusionary attitudes. There's no harm in using these particular terms synonymously, of course, but it's fun to know more about them so that when we read them or hear we already know the bigger picture.
If you know, how did a floral term like "bouquet" get associated with tertiary aroma in the first place? It's a weird disjunction: the language of the most ephemeral / transient thing within the universe of primary aromas being used to talk about longevity.
I don't know the full history, but do know that the French word originally referred to a cluster of trees, from Old French "bosque," meaning wood; whence we also get "bosc" Bouquet can also refer to the aroma of perfume, and apparently was in use to refer to the aroma of wine by 1815.
The Oxford Companion, in the entry AROMA, notes that people schooled at University of Bordeaux include fermentation smells in bouquet, while in Burgundy they break it into Primary (grape), Secondary (fermentation and oak aging), and either Tertiary or Bouquet (bottle aging)
I see Stephen below has pre-empted me, I think the lay failure to distinguish between aroma and bouquet is completely logical and hopefully with common usage these will eventually be recognized as synonyms. I asked google to define bouquet and they gave me this: 3
a
: a distinctive and characteristic fragrance (as of wine)
The wine has a lovely bouquet.
Nuff said!
This Abecedaria series is about fleshing out the rainbow of implications and meanings that inhere in wine and food terminology. Part of the idea is that the more we understand about how and why the words are used in certain ways, the less likely we are to associate them with snobbism or exclusionary attitudes. There's no harm in using these particular terms synonymously, of course, but it's fun to know more about them so that when we read them or hear we already know the bigger picture.
If you know, how did a floral term like "bouquet" get associated with tertiary aroma in the first place? It's a weird disjunction: the language of the most ephemeral / transient thing within the universe of primary aromas being used to talk about longevity.
I don't know the full history, but do know that the French word originally referred to a cluster of trees, from Old French "bosque," meaning wood; whence we also get "bosc" Bouquet can also refer to the aroma of perfume, and apparently was in use to refer to the aroma of wine by 1815.
The Oxford Companion, in the entry AROMA, notes that people schooled at University of Bordeaux include fermentation smells in bouquet, while in Burgundy they break it into Primary (grape), Secondary (fermentation and oak aging), and either Tertiary or Bouquet (bottle aging)