The Organoleptic Qualities of a Wine

I am currently reading an excellent article that is available on the Internet called Microbial modulation of wine aroma and flavour. The beginning of this article explains the organoleptic qualities of wine, or how our senses of sight, smell, taste and touch come into play when drinking wine.
We use our senses to analyze the structure of a wine including acidity, sweetness, bitterness, tannin (in red wine), alcohol, palate weight and length, mouth-feel, and mousse (in sparkling wine). When structural elements are in balance and harmony, this leads to complexity experienced as diversity and layers of flavour. Describing this complexity is where knowing the vocabulary of organoleptic qualities of wine come in to play.
I learned from taking the U.C. Davis online course that one can be a "hedonist" which simply means in wine terms that you either like the wine or you don't. I am a hedonist. But for people who want to break down a wine using all of their senses, wine attributes can become complicated.

Sense	Attributes
Sight	cloudy, hazy, deposit in the glass, depth of colour, hue, mousse
Taste	palate; involves sweetness, acidity, bitterness, saltiness and the taste of umami
Smell	aroma is normally used to describe the smell of a young, fresh wine due to chemical compounds with low boiling points that are volatile and detectable by the human nose primary smells originate during fermentation – typically youthful with upfront fresh fruit notes bouquet is the term for an older wine, less fresh but more complex secondary smells stem from oak maturation tertiary smells originate during bottle aging; developed fruit showing more age, with stewed or dried fruit and other smells coming into play
Touch	mouth-feel relates to the body and texture of wine influenced by factors such as alcohol content (sensation of warmth) and tannins (drying sensation)

See how complicated it can be to analyze a wine properly? That is one reason that I am a hedonist. People bring their own experiences to a wine tasting and what one person describes may not be the same as what another person describes. But a lively discussion on the organoleptic qualities of a given wine being tasted is never a bad thing.

References:
1. Swiegers, Jan & Bartowsky, Eveline & HENSCHKE, P.A. & PRETORIUS, I.S.. (2005). Microbial modulation of wine aroma and flavour. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. 11. 139 - 173. 10.1111/j.1755-0238.2005.tb00285.x. (Note: if you click on the link, the article may take a while to load into your browser.)
Illustration extracted from the above reference with modified caption.