Monday, April 11, 2011

Flavor / Aroma Wheels

I'm surprised to learn that flavor /aroma wheels are a fairly recent invention. What is a flavor wheel? A way of finding your way to the precise words for what you smell and taste. As far as I can ascertain, it was a professor at UC Davis, Ann Noble, who came up with the first aroma wheel, for wine. Watch her brief video introduction to the wine aroma wheel here. As a writer, I am enchanted at the idea of a tool to help us better describe wine-- or, for that matter, anything.
>>Honey flavor wheel
(you have to go over to the right on the page and click to download the PDF of the abstract)
>>Beer flavor wheel
>>Chocolate flavor wheel (and another chocolate flavor wheel here).
>>CSK Flavor wheel for cheese
>>Mary Ann Drake on defining dairy flavors (from 2003)
>>Zarf's Flavor wheels of the world
(Zarf is a interactive fiction / game designer; the link is to an extensive blog post).
More anon.