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Hello and Thank you for stopping by. I am Ann C. Noble, the inventor of the wine aroma wheel. I created this tool while working at the University of California at Davis.

I joined the Faculty there in 1974; believe it or not, I was the first female professor ever hired in the department of Enology and Viticulture. My role was to develop the sensory research program and educate the next generation of wine industry professionals.

I published the first article on the Wine Aroma Wheel in 1984. This is how I described the process in an interview few years ago.

"The Wine Aroma Wheel was developed through considerable preliminary work.
A long list of terms useful for precisely describing notes in red and white wine aromas had been accumulated in several wine descriptive analyses studies, in weekly student sensory evaluation laboratories, and in lab sections of my wine sensory course at University of California, Davis. A collection of lists of previously published wine terms included hedonic, non-specific terms such as “harmonious” or “elegant.”

I collated these published lists of wine aroma terms and collected additional descriptive terms. These terms were grouped by similarity of aroma as much as possible. This list was sent to the wine industry asking for their comments on the suitability or usefulness of each term. A group of winemakers and sensory people then met to cull the subjective terms (harmonious, etc) and include those “thought to be useful.” Flavor chemists had compiled terminology for the brewing industry and the Scotch industry. Both had created a circular wheel format to list these terms; however their wheels referred to flavors whereas the wine wheel only includes aroma terms."[Excerpt from Q&A with Ann Noble, Inventor of the Aroma Wheel, 2012]

I retired in 2002 from the University and pursued a career consulting for the wine industry. I created this website to make the wine aroma wheel available for purchase.

Beginning of 2019, I asked my friend Isabelle Lesschaeve at InnoVinum LLC to manage the website and the sales of my products. You can get to know Isabelle by reading her bio here.

Thanks for your interest!

Honours received

  • 1991: Premio Ruffino per la Scienza Vitivinicola, Florence, Italy.
  • 1994: Honorary Research Lecturer, American Society of Viticulture and Enology
  • 1999: Hall of Fame Award by LA Chapter of Women for Winesense
  • 2000: Award of Merit, American Wine Society
  • 2001: Named 1 of 10 outstanding women in CA wine industry by Decanter Magazine

Some references on the wine aroma wheel

Noble, A. C., Arnold, R. A., Masuda, B. M., Pecore, S. D., Schmidt, J. O., & Stern, P. M. (1984). Progress towards a standardized system of wine aroma terminology. American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 35, 107-109.

Noble, A. C., Arnold, R. A., Buechsenstein, J., Leach, E. J., Schmidt, J. O., & Stern, P. M. (1987). Modification of a standardized system of wine aroma terminology. American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 38(143-146).

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