Cereal
Malt, bread, dough, and porridge.
Tasting wheel
Know the taste, but can’t quite name it? The wheel gives you a few words to try.
Start with what you notice
Does it remind you of fruit? Follow that part of the wheel outward. Maybe it's a crisp apple, a little citrus, or a handful of raisins. A couple of words is plenty. Leave out anything you don't taste.
Pick a note to find out more and see bottles with that flavor.
Tasting notes
These are the notes you can choose when you log a tasting.
Fruit
Fresh, dried, cooked, tropical, and citrus fruit.
Floral
Flowers, herbs, leaves, grass, and tea.
Smoke
Peat smoke, ash, medicine, wet stone, and sea air.
Earthy
Leather, tobacco, nuts, coffee, wax, soil, and savory food.
Sulfur
Struck matches, rubber, metal, onion, and fireworks.
Sweet
Honey, vanilla, caramel, toffee, cream, and chocolate.
Spice
Pepper, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and licorice.
Wood
Oak, cedar, resin, sherry, wine, and toasted wood.
About this wheel
Our starting point was the Wine & Spirit Education Trust's 2025 tasting guide, alongside wheels for Scotch, American whiskey, and Canadian whisky. The 9 categories here are our own arrangement of those ideas.
The categories reflect what the notes remind you of. You don't need to know whether a flavor came from the grain, the still, or the cask to put a name to it.
On a bottle page, a larger slice means more public reviews and tastings mention that category. On distillery and region pages, it means more bottles have those notes. Neither tells you how strong a flavor tastes, and your notes don't have to match anyone else's.
Sources and references
- Wine & Spirit Education TrustTasting guide for spirits, 2025
- Scotch Whisky Research InstituteScotch whisky tasting wheel, 2020
- Whisky MagazineCharles MacLean's whisky tasting wheel
- Woodford ReserveAmerican whiskey tasting wheels
- J.P. Wiser'sCanadian whisky flavor wheel
- Dr Jim SwanHow the first whisky tasting wheel was made