I think flavor/acid and texture can all affect each others perception of the other. So I think crunchy is a tannic sensation typically found in wines that are tart and fresh. If those same tannins were in a more mature or aged wine of a different style, we might use the word chewy instead.
I think its the combination of flavor, acid and texture that result in the use of the word crunchy. This alludes to the concept that there typically isn’t a single explanation or source for a specific flavor we taste in a wine. Often it is a combination of factors that we are tasting and our brain identifies them as one thing.
Yes, as Robert said, that’s really it. When I taste some Roches Neuves from the Loire, or Frédéric Mabileau wines, or Clau de Nell, for example, that’s the sensation I get. Nothing unripe but a sense of biting into a fresh, crisp, red cherry or redcurrant, so bright, tangy, unsweetened, not at all plush and polished, just pure and slightly tart. It’s a sensation that I love, something that drew me away from the type of Bordeaux I got bored of fifteen years ago.
To be fair, there are Bordeaux producers making that type of wine too: Clos du Jaugueyron, Closerie des Moussis, for example, both of which I drink a lot of.
I’m not a hardcore defender of biodynamic wines but it’s a sensation I associate with those wines, of which all the above are great examples.
Fun stuff. Here’s the really hard part. It’s more about the taster or describer. When Jeremy Holmes uses crunchy, I totally get it and it’s helpful. It’s similar to a score on a bottle of wine; a 95 from some rando means absolutely nothing. Until you have calibrated your palate scores and some descriptions mean nothing. Crunchy is definitely one of those words.
I have some synesthesia, so I haven’t entered this discussion, because I sometimes don’t know if my descriptors are reasonable to other people. Colors have smells, textures have tastes, numbers have colors….it’s very weird.
I think sweetness is not necessarily contradictory to crunchiness.
Most sweet wines tend to have a certain quality of ripeness to them, so even though an Auslese Riesling might be very high in acidity, it might be hard to describe the wine as crunchy, if the flavor profile of the wine was very ripe, honeyed and marmaladey.
However, a classic sweet Jurançon wine might be a completely different story. Such a wine might be as sweet as an Auslese Riesling from Mosel, yet with a fruit quality almost just borderlining with ripeness, more on the Granny Smith apple and key lime end of the spectrum. Very fresh, very crunchy, yet with a considerable amount of RS.
However, while not impossible, such a combination is not very common - at least not in my books.
This is the closest to how I think about it. Rahsaan and Otto are onto something also.
Its more about the sensation of the interplay of the acidity against the fruit that makes a wine ‘crunchy’ to me. The acidity sort of pops under the fruit the way “crunchy” fruit would when chewing. That of course means younger wines. Can be whites but mostly reds.
I think its important to point out for people newer to wine that descriptors are not always about flavors. I’ve run into people new to wine(or that obviously are by their CT notes) that are trying to correlate acidity in the flavors of a wine. Many descriptors are more about textures and sensations. Which can be difficult to understand or even confusing if your comparative tasting experience is low.
