Wine-Inspired Perfume Pairs Rhubarb With Merlot

Wine connoisseurs will probably sniff their noses as they say, "One should never wear perfume in a tasting room." Well, here's a perfume line you can maybe sneak into some more casual areas.

"Scent sommelier" Kelly Jones has created a line of perfumes called the "Notes of Wine Collection," taking the pleasant notes of wine (and not the alcohol) and diffusing them into perfumes.

"You don't want to someone walking into your tasting room wearing Chanel No. 5; it's a powdery scent," Jones said. "Or, say a fragrance that's very, very floral, that's not going to match with a merlot that has lots of light fruit."

So Jones took her experience producing custom fragrances, paired it with her habit of going to wine country in California, and perfected five wine-inspired scents, released this spring.

"The whole concept is to have fragrance that is used to enhance the nuances of the wine," Jones told us over the phone. "When you're wearing it, it makes the whole wine sipping experience so sensorial and fun, and you really appreciate all the different notes that are in the bouquets."

So "Notes of Riesling" mixes together peach, Anjou pear, bergamot, and raspberry. Cabernet calls for pink peppercorn, black cherry, tobacco flower, and vintage leather.

Merlot brings out red currant, mission fig, rhubarb, and candied violet; as for chardonnay, there's honeydew melon, vanilla, crème brûlée, and oak.

"I purchased five bottles of my very favorite wine, and one by one, pulled fragrances from my scent library until I got to a mixture that perfectly captured the bouquet in the glass," Jones tells us of the process. "For example, for the sauvignon blanc, I found yuzu grapefruit essential oils, light white florals, I found a little of a green apple, and I just mixed and matched."

Jones spent two years developing the fragrances, tasting, testing, drinking, and mixing. "I could only do one varietal at a time," she told us. In the meantime, Jones may be looking at trying zinfadel, champagne, and viognier-based scents.

"Perfumery is fun, it's a little bit like cooking," she told us. "You're just adjusting your ingredients one by one and creating a formula until it's perfected."

Bottles are available for $84 for 50 ml, while a sample flight of all five scents goes for $20 at kellyandjones.com.