My wife is ok at picking the variety but not great. But she can pick out flavors and smells like a champ. She is a better taster but she also does post of the cooking so she knows what coriander smells like no don’t have a clue.
The funny thing though is that she will drink “lesser” wines than I will accept. She knows they aren’t great but she finds something redeeming in them. I just dump it and get another bottle from the cellar.
Mine is very similar to your Paul. She will go on and on about this flavor, or that smell. She seems to me to miss structure and balance. (My definition of those).
While she enjoys the finer wines we buy, she is just as fine popping a 20 dollar bottle from tw or costco.
I have gotten to the point that I would rather not drink unless I am really enjoying the wine.
It is not a learned skill.
It is innate.
Google something like “olfactory dimorphism”. You’ll get bazillions of hits [post-mortem neuron and axon counts, 28-day periodic cycles of increasing and decreasing olfactory perception, etc].
My anecdotal evidence points me in that direction as well. As an example, my wife is a far better wine taster than me in terms of picking up nuances and flavors that I cannot sense or describe. She’s not, by our definition, a wine afficionado, mostly drinking Sav Blanc.
“We’ll have the Ipecac, 2008, and please decant that for us.”