Jancis Robinson has a nice article up on the hottest topic among wine geeks—minerality. (I did my own write up on it a few weeks ago.)

Jancis, like most wine writers today, finds the term useful in describing a range of flavors found in wines—wet stones, struck flint and “gaseous whiffs” for her. I use the term to refer to steely sensations and the smell of crushed rock as well.

It has been well established by science that what we’re tasting has little if anything to do with minerals in the soil. That’s fine. We’re trying to describe a sensation not discover the underlying cause of the sensation.

So it rankles me a bit when wine scientists criticize writers for using the term. Geologist Alex Maltman “went on to mock us for our use of the term gunflint, a common tasting term for Loire Sauvignon Blancs”, and “ is utterly bemused by the many bottlings nowadays that carry the name of a well-known soil type”. Dr. Richard Smart  continued in the same vein, “Does the term add to the pleasure of wine?’ he asked rhetorically, before asking us all to stop using it.“

Well in fact Dr. Smart, yet it does. It helps us describe flavor notes that would otherwise be elusive without the term and its relatives. As long as we aren’t misleading readers by claiming we’re tasting soil minerals transferred to the wine, I don’t see the problem.

It’s the scientist’s job to find the causes of wine flavors; its the writer’s job to describe experiences and communicate them. Don’t scientists have enough to do without the mission creep?

We will happily leave the science to the scientists. They should leave the poetry to us.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tasted a wine and detected a hint of sweetness, only to find out from the winemaker that it was vinified dry with almost no residual sugar.

New research from France explains why:

‘What we have uncovered is that it is the species of oak that makes the greatest difference to taste. The research uncovered that oak contain naturally-occurring compounds that impart sweetness (the QTTs), and others that impart bitterness (there are several, but one of the key molecules is Glu-BA). Peduncular was richer in bitter compounds and sessile in sweet.’

Sessile oak has always been privileged for ageing wine. It contains many of the aromatic molecules such as vanillin and whisky-lactone that imparts the patisserie and coconut smells typical of oak-aged wine, but the discovery of the QTT molecules deepens our understanding of why. Taste is intensified by molecules of aroma, so a sweet taste will ‘taste’ sweeter if it is imprinted with the smell of vanilla. In this way, sessile oak wins on both counts.

If I understand this correctly, we perceive sweetness in wine that has been exposed to vanillin or whiskey lactone because we associate vanilla and coconut with sweet foods. But if we associate vanilla and coconut with sweetness because they are usually consumed with sweet foods, doesn’t a similar phenomenon occur with fruit? Ripe fruits are naturally sweet and so we are likely to taste sweetness in a fruity wine even if it is bone dry.

The mind plays tricks.