Peter,
Thanks for a great and thoughtful post. I agree with you re: “rocks”, though Kevin raises a good point…sometimes the metaphorical descriptors are so close to the “real thing” that it’s too close to call. Having said that, I often describe aged California Cabs as “sweaty” on the nose, knowing full well that there’s probably no sweat involved (at least to the extent that it actually makes it INTO the bottle!).
Cheers,
Jim
Yes, we finally have a real terroir thread, and interestingly stated at that.
A few comments:
Good points Guillaume. The people that write about “science” of terroir just need to taste (or as you appropriately note - smell) more wine.
Peter’s point about the interaction of acidity and herbal notes is particularly incorrect. For wines grown in all of Europes regions as well as the New Wordl, it’s actually the deeper soiled, flatter sites that offer more acidity, more herbal notes and much less “minerality”. This is because the the vines are not kept in natural balance by a shallow topsoil. "Mineral"wines are not herbal or necessarily high in acidity, but they are grown on rocky soils and this is a critical element of natural balance of all components (acid, phenols, alcohol etc) that helps express “minerality”.
I would dispute that.
Partly because we do taste separately from smell. There are also purely palate reactions. Tannins are not smelled, but “tasted” or, more precisely maybe, felt by the tongue and mouth. Salt is odorless and relies on water reactions to ionize for us to experience. That only occurs upon contact.
More for clarity. While olfaction plays a huge role in tasting (wine, in particular), there is a difference between when we “smell” or put our nose next something to passively experience what is sloughed off and when we “taste” or put it in our mouths. The process of “tasting” encompasses both the literal taste buds and the olfactory process where compounds are made volatile by body heat, aeration and chemical reactions with our body fluids. When someone says “taste” in a wine context, I think it is uselessly pedantic to consider that as just the nerve reactions from the tongue. It is that whole process by which we experience wine.
A.
I tried to be very careful in my formulation, but I should have used aromas (only smell) instead of flavors (smell and taste combined).
Partly because we do taste separately from smell. There are also purely palate reactions. Tannins are not smelled, but “tasted” or, more precisely maybe, felt by the tongue and mouth. Salt is odorless and relies on water reactions to ionize for us to experience. That only occurs upon contact.
More for clarity. While olfaction plays a huge role in tasting (wine, in particular), there is a difference between when we “smell” or put our nose next something to passively experience what is sloughed off and when we “taste” or put it in our mouths. The process of “tasting” encompasses both the literal taste buds and the olfactory process where compounds are made volatile by body heat, aeration and chemical reactions with our body fluids. When someone says “taste” in a wine context, I think it is uselessly pedantic to consider that as just the nerve reactions from the tongue. It is that whole process by which we experience wine.
I totally agree, but then again it’s not in contradiction with what I was saying. My issue is that I thought all this was muddled in Peter’s post, and you might think it pedantic to differentiate between smell, taste and touch because the “experience of wine tasting” draws on each of these senses as a whole, but as I pointed out it leads to nonsensical comments such as “rocks taste gritty and flavorless” - that doesn’t mean anything. Rocks have a smell, might have have a taste (I’d probably have a hard time relating “sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, sourness and umami” to rocks) and definitely provoke a reaction when touched (for which as you noted our vocabulary is incredibly poor).
Now to come back to the main point, and because I do not want to be labeled as a contrarian for the sake of it, we have already discussed this in the other thread about minerality. I remain unconvinced.
We can identify minerality in wine, regardless of whether it’s truly by analogy or not.
The first argument is to say that since we identify other flavors by analogy, then we also identify minerality by analogy. I remain unconvinced because minerality cannot be as simply expressed as a flavor like berries or cat pee, and it can’t either be simply related to one wine characteristic (which is actually there and not identified by analogy), e.g. acidity, tannins, alcohol… I therefore do think there’s a good chance that we do not identify minerality only by analogy.
The second argument is that the relation between the minerality we can identify in a wine and the actual soil where the vines are planted is a figment of our imagination, and that this view is justified by scientific evidence. Again, I remain unconvinced. First of all, on a theoretical level, it’s not because we have one explanation of the interaction between plants and soil that there isn’t more to it than that. And all the more because it seems to me that out understanding of these processes and of the “tasting experience” as a whole are underdeveloped at this stage. Second, on a practical level, there is for me evidence to the contrary. For me e.g. the minerality in Chambolle and Morey aren’t expressed in the same way (and I think a big reason why I like the former much more than the latter on average). Of course I do not have a track record of 100% identification of these wines in a blind tasting therefore it’s easy to dismiss me as being a dreamer or a charlatan. It’s also easy to go back to the French wine industry marketing ploy (but then I usually smile when I think that these characteristics have been categorized way before marketing was invented - actually even “markets” didn’t really exist back then - that can be a problem when trying to explain centuries old decisions with modern thinking). The Chablis example is also striking to me.
In conclusion I have no beef in this matter, I merely drink the wine, but I remain unconvinced that the minerality we identify in wine isn’t actually directly linked to the soil and its own minerality.
I think we are pretty much on the same page, Guillaume.
As you say, what is both scientific and interesting is working from the essentially empirical creation of terroir elements of taste and working towards an explanation.
Simplistically, it seems like 3 options - not mutally exclusive:
The empirical data is illusory. We humans are good at seeing patterns that aren’t there as our brains are wired to organize. That is why we apply stats to test.
What is consistently expressed in something like Chablis is organic in origin, not mineral. Either coinicidence that we taste those seashells or, more likely, we have selected Chablis as desirable which has that and evolved those flavors through a combo of viticulture and cellar practice. Conversely, there is no bacon in Hermitage.
There is something there whereby trace elements do contribute to flavor.
A.
I just had to chuckle when I saw the title of Peter’s thread. I went to a tasting a couple of years ago of 04’ Bordeaux when it was first released. One person there actually described the nose of the wine as “cat pee on pine”. At first we all thought it was just a funny/silly statement to make but as time went on many of us gradually came to understand what she was getting and agreed!
Not quite sure about that one. First because as I pointed out before, there’s a difference between minerality and bacon - bacon is purely smell, minerality is at several levels. Second, if we could really “evolve those flavors through a combo of viticulture and cellar practice” I guess a lot more people would be producing Chablis, or Champagne, etc. My usual deal-breaker on this is to try a Meursault and a Macon by Dominique Lafon. You can instantly recognize the producer’s style, but even he can’t make Meursault in Macon.
So, Peter, is this conference a total waste of time?
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I give this thread 93-95 points… ![[berserker.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8600bbd4810d342b8fbd4ffb62b4f0026275fd37.gif "berserker"){kind=small}