Sherry

Note Profile

Prepared

About

The smell of an oxidised fortified wine. Walnut leads, then dried fruit, toasted oak and tobacco. It is dry, aged and autumnal rather than a fresh grape smell.

Scent Profile

Nutty leads, and walnut is the word the trade source puts first: 'nutty aromas (especially walnuts)'. Boozy is the referent itself, a fortified wine at 15 to 20 percent, and it carries the widest spread here at 0.20 because neither source describes the alcohol. Fruity is dried, not fresh: 'dried fruits' in the oloroso profile and acetaldehyde's 'pungent, fruity' in the study, which names the fruity series as one of the two most characteristic. Warm_spice has three independent odorants behind it, 4-ethylguaiacol as clove, eugenol as cinnamon and sotolon as curry, plus 'exotic spices' in the trade source, and the study says these strengthen with ageing. Tobacco_hay is stated twice, once as sotolon's own descriptor and once in the oloroso profile. Dry_woody is 'polished wood' and the oak the wine sits in. Smoky is the empyreumatic series the study names as most characteristic, reaching the nose as 'burnt wood', 'toasted' and 'burnt'. Leather and sour sit level. Leather is named outright in the oloroso profile. Sour is the wine acid and acetaldehyde's pungency, and it is what keeps the note from reading as a caramel accord. Earthy is 'subtle meaty hints, truffle'. Sweet_vanillic is the oak and the dried fruit, held low because no source calls this wine sweet. Honeyed, animalic and floral are trace, the last from furfural.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Fruity, Spicy, Amber · Musk · Leather

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Sherry is a fortified wine from Jerez in Andalusia, aged five to six years under a flor yeast veil or oxidatively in oak. A gas chromatography-olfactometry study of fino sherry names the odorants directly: sotolon reading curry and tobacco, furfural reading floral and burnt wood, 4-ethylguaiacol reading toasted and clove, eugenol reading burnt and cinnamon, acetaldehyde reading pungent and fruity. The study calls the fruity and empyreumatic series the most characteristic, and says the spicy notes strengthen with age. There is no sherry raw material. Any sherry note is an accord built to the drink.

Usage in Perfumery

A boozy and gourmand accent, usually in the heart, next to tobacco, dried fruit, oak, leather and warm spice. It reads drier and more toasted than port wine, which is red-fruit led, and less caramelised than madeira. It is the fortified-wine idea taken towards the cask rather than towards the sugar.