An aroma picker for the Le Nez du Vin game

https://blog.jgc.org/2023/09/weekend-bricolage-aroma-picker-for-le.html

by rcarmo • 3 years ago

35 9 3 years ago

blog.jgc.org

This game is fantastic, it's alarming to realise how dependent we are on context to identify aromas. You can try one of the scents and be entirely unable to identify it, then someone tells you what it is and suddenly it seems blindingly obvious!

fsckboy• 3 years ago

Le Nez du Vin (french) means in english, "the wine nose" though perhaps "a nose for wine" might be more in the spirit of what it's saying. I had some difficulting understanding what this thing is precisely.

Just as an aside, I have a lot of years of experience with wine, tasting, purchasing, drinking, traveling around europe, etc. And I've never understood focusing beginners on this scent stuff, like Gary Vaynerchuk has that video with dozens of pots of jam. I really enjoy wine, but I've never "cared" whether I get a note of persimmon vs apricot. I like fruit notes, I prefer wines that show fruit notes, and tasting persimmon side-by-side to apricot, yeah, I wouldn't mind have the vocabulary on the tip of my tongue, but does it actually make a difference to my enjoyment? not really.

There is an exception, and I'm very interested in it, but it's highly technical and knowledge not that easy to come by. And that is, it's easy to make a cheap champagne with notes of green apple. It's much fancier to make a champagne without notes of green apple. There's nothing wrong with liking green apple, perfectually enjoyable, but intellectually knowing what goes into the wine making to achieve certain flavors/aromas is definitely interesting.

So, persimmon vs apricot might tell you something about the wine varietal or viniculture that is interesting to know, but without that extra information it's a bit of a "who cares" to me.

Leo_Germond2• 3 years ago

Le Nez in this context means the aromatic palette, through a metonymy. Not sure it translates well to English, since this stylistic device may be very French in its usage (another example would be Musée Rodin's exhibition Rodin, la main révèle l'homme)

d1sxeyes• 3 years ago

It translates exactly. In oenology, it is indeed referred to as the 'nose' of the wine in English. I've also heard it used for whiskey.

trylfthsk• 3 years ago

what's the secret of green apple in champagne?

pigsmedallion• 3 years ago

Fun project! This reminds me of the game the main character in Drops of God plays. Wonderful TV show if you're into wine (think Queen's Gambit meets Wine)

irtefa• 3 years ago

Hey John! Do you have plans to refine or iterate on this design at all? What features would take this aroma picker to the next level?

jgrahamc• 3 years ago

No, I do not. I have a list of projects as long as my arm and this was just a weekend hack to make something useful. But you could imagine enhancements:

1. Allow configuration of the number of times the animation happens before giving a number.

2. Keep track of numbers and disallow duplicates. Make that configurable.

An aroma picker for the Le Nez du Vin game

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