Minerality in CA Pinot: Yes or No?

The title is purposely vague, as I have a couple of questions on this topic …

I know plenty of people who just don’t appreciate minerality in wine … at all. They find steely, wet rock flavors unpleasant. And since I normally find minerality to be highly associated with acid, these same people really don’t like wines with minerality because they also find them to be “harsh”, “tight”, “searing”, etc.

Personally, I like wines that refresh the palate, and so I find minerality appealing, as in the 2006 Siduri Pinot. We consumed it way too young, but it was great with rich cheeses. A bite of unctuous, stinky cheese, a sip of wine. Start all over again.

Do American wine drinkers simply not appreciate minerality? Particularly with its high association with acids? Do American winemakers avoid highlighting minerality because of American taste? And by ‘American wine drinkers’ I mean your average wine appreciator–not yer total cork dork and not the soccer mom who buys box wine at the grocery–I mean people who drink wine 2+ times a week, know their grapes and producers, and maintain a small+ collection.

Do you find many CA wines, particularly pinot but other wines as well, that have well-articulated minerality? Wines so mineral that pretty much everyone gets it, and not just a few spaced out wine geeks?

I have never been able to hang onto any pinot for very long … six months is a stretch for me. So I have to ask others … how does minerality play up/down with time? Does it become more prominent, or muted?

“minerality” is another one of those toughies to define in the wine lexicon.

i know how I define it in whites, but am still sussing it out for myself in reds (and using it to describe an incredibly acidic wine doesn’t do the term justice IMHO).

how’s that for not answering the question? [rolleyes.gif] As with so many other topics, though, we can’t discuss it (and certainly not over the intranet) without a clear consensus on what it means…

I would say its mainly a wine geek thing 100%. You say minerality to the casual Cab/Chard drinker and they will give you a quizzical look.

I have heard the theory that it is a quality that comes from low alcohol/high acid wines but even that is hard to define. I think that might be the case but I don’t think anyone can say for certain and I’ve seen endless threads throwing up theories and disagreements. A lot of it is surely individual perception as well. I’ve heard people talk about minerality in wines that to me didn’t have the vaguest notion of it.

On the aging, I would think it might become more prominent with age as the fruit relaxes and let’s the acids show themselves better.

So…I don’t think minerality is necessarily associated with acid, but we haven’t really defined what is considered high acid. I know of wines that have a TA below 6g/L that I find highly mineral.

I think this thread has the potential to get pretty heated, but I think that minerality is simply not a prized attribute in American wines. I think that very ripe picking and high amounts of new oak can blur minerality from a winemaking standpoint and I think that certain soils don’t show as much minerality. I believe the average US wine drinker puts more emphasis on other attributes, and minerality doesn’t really register as being all that important. Usually the holy grail of minerality is Burgundy, but there are other areas that can show really mineral wines, like Priorat, Aglianico from Taurasi and so forth. But there are certainly American Pinots with minerality. To me, the minerality only gets more prominent with age, as the fruit characters recede. Old Burgundies are the most mineral wines I’ve ever had, and old Pommards are some of the most mineral Burgundies I’ve had.

Flame away…

Much like Nate, I usually associate minerality with my favorite whites - usually German Riesling and certian (the best IMO) styles of Chardonnay.

But with reds, I’m much less apt to pull the ‘mineraltiy’ descriptor out of the bag… That being said, many describe the wines from some my favorite producers as having a mineral quality (Rhys and Cedarville), so I guess it may be a quality that appeals to me universally in wine - red or white.

Could it be that the presence of Malolactic acid in most reds that makes it tougher to detect that quality??

I like minerality in most of the wines I drink, red or white or pink. And sometimes it seems like the acidity creates the perception of minerality or crushed rocks or whatever and sometimes it just shows as minerality…to me.

Now, I think the “average” consumer doesn’t really like minerality in red wines of any sort. The average or occasional wine consumer either just likes the wine or doesn’t. And most prefer more fruit forward, lower acid wines.

As for the denizens of the wine boards and the more avid wine drinkers I would just simply say some like it and some don’t.

On a side note, when too much acid has been added I get a burn that resembles heat but in reality is just too much added tartaric. And sometimes that shows a sort of minerally component but to me, it really stands out in a negative way.

Hey Mike, I think maybe you’re asking about the presence of lactic acid, as malic is consumed during ML, and the vast majority of reds go through ML. I don’t think lactic masks minerality, I think it’s a flavor component and not a reflection of acidity.

Thanks Jeff - you are correct in your assumptions about my question. And yet another indication of why I make a better drinker of wine than a maker of it!

No problem!

A clarification on my point about it being a flavor component. I’ve seen vineyards where the particular mineral character was expressed across not only across differing clones at differing acidity levels, but even across varieties. To me, this divorces minerality from being tied to just acidity. Just my 2 cents-

so…so far acid, oak, soil, rocks and heat have been referenced in discussing minerality. shall we attempt some definitions of what it actually is?

i have seen people use the term to describe, simply put, the lack of fruitiness. i have also seen people use it to describe wines that are very tart.

personally, i don’t buy either of those…there’s more to it. as i said, i know what i mean with it in whites, and seem it to find most often in moderately aged Chablis and some Alsatian PG and the occasional Riesling. i am still having fun sorting it out in red wines.

This is a fantastic thread.

I’ve not yet really ‘searched’ for minerality in reds, but since I now enjoy it so much in the whites, perhaps I should pay attention…

Well to me, minerality is a definite taste of steel, copper penny, blood iron or crushed rocks. What? You didn’t suck on rocks as a kid to see if it would help you stay down on the bottom of the swimming hole? I usually try to define the minerality as a descriptor in tasting notes and not just call it “minerality”. I tasted a really awful cab once that had a lingering finish of aluminum foil … that and the fact that it tasted like Gerber asparagus made it a truly memorable wine.

A wine showing a lot of tartness would mask the minerality to me as I usually notice both attributes towards the finish. I find very tart acidity to be very distracting.

Wet rocks, rain on pavement, mineral water are the things I associate with minerality. If it is a flavor component as has been suggested it seems to be one that can be easily over whelmed by other flavors and fruit expression I have found. I don’t know what it is but like reading the input.

i’ve always liked the wet rock and damp pavement analogies, mr. damprock. they work for me in aromas. the texture is tougher.

mary - the only problem with the steel, tin, foil etc references to the taste descriptors is that there is interference there from certain Brett and SO2. They muddy the picture, as both can give the aluminum foil character you speak of or other metallic sensations.

i probably did suck on rocks, but don’t have a vivid sensory recall of it. i am learning with my own kids that probably just about everything i ever came across went in my mouth at one point or another.

I completely agree - go try a Donnhoff Spatlese: Tons of minerals/crushed rock aromatics and taste, along with very concentrated flavors of tropical fruits/bananas/peaches/etc/etc…

Nice thread. I have been traveling so haven’t been visiting the board but now have some free time … although short, but I enjoy the topic.

Bullet points for me.

20 years ago I often found minerality bothersome.

Over the last 10 years, most of my favorite wines have a streak.

I rarely find minerality in Cali pinot.

Jason

And they are sooooo cute!

Lordy, that wine was indeed bretty. This was years ago, and a blind date brought this old cab because someone told him I was “into wine” so I had to actually swallow some of it. And I couldn’t hurt his feelings, could I? The best I could come up with though was, “Mmm, it’s like … dinner in a glass!” [nea.gif]
I still remember that wine … and the producer.

This conversation could indeed spin off into all the nasty metallic elements we get from brett and SO2 and other factors, and I certainly don’t mind if it does … although I’m still hoping to explore the popularity of ‘minerality’ with the wine drinking crowd and winemakers.

On minerality in reds–I get ‘wet rocks’ in a few pinots and find it quite alluring if it has enough rosy fruit to balance it. We have a couple of syrah vineyards in our portfolio that give us some really interesting blood iron qualities in most vintages, and sometimes I really like just a touch of this flavor in syrahs and syrah blends.

I agree with those who say people use the term too loosely, though. I have heard it used to praise wines that are faint of fruit, flawed, or a little salty. (I know that sounds like a flaw too but some nice wines do have a whiff of ocean air about them.) I always have to be a little skeptical when someone starts flinging the term around without any precision or other details in the tasting note to give it context.

Poor Cris. There must be someone out there who appreciates him!

Why is that “minerality” and not “metallic”?

Minerality is separate from acid. It is separate from metals. Wet rocks is where I go with minerality. It is a taste and can also be a textural sensation. I find it mainly in whites, but some reds like syrahs show good minerality. Fruit will fade generally faster than minerality but both do eventually fade with time.