Use Your Nose

So what did I learn at the first sommelier course lesson? Apart from the party trick of how to open a bottle of champagne by chopping the top off the bottle with a knife, I learned that I have to smell everything. I must have only been fake smelling before. One of the wines we tasted was a Vernaccia di San Gimignano. When the instructor asked what it smelled like, I ventured, ‘Grapefruit’. He didn’t even deign to look at me. Someone from the back shouted, ‘Apple’. ‘Apple’, repeated the instructor approvingly. Back home, I went on a search for the apple that smells like grapefruit, buying up every variety in the village shop.

Golden delicious, Jaime and Granny Smith

With a bit of imagination Granny Smith came closest to grapefruit. Over on the internet on an Australian website, I found that apples and grapefruits contain both malic acid and citric acid, but when I tried to find out what causes the typical apple odour, none of Google’s suggestions helped and one got me wondering what other objects I need to smell: ‘The scent of an Apple product, sourcing the MacBook Pro fragrance’.
Any advice about wine and apples?