I think so but Geri Tashjian of the Burgundy Wine Co. isn’t sure.
The strongest “gunflint” I can remember was in an Australian un-oaked Chardonnay. I think it’s an inherent part of the grape, but it gets covered up by oak and ML fermentation. You can’t smell it behind vanilla popcorn.
Frank -
What is “gunflint” like? Can you describe it? It it a mineral sensation, or are we talking about the strike of flint against steel (ozone? smoke?)? Or something else altogether?
The only wine I associate with gunflint is an obscure Touraine white, Fie Gris, from Jacky Pres. Why? Because it’s labeled “Terroir Pierre à Fusil.”
Best,
Bob
I have a very clear idea of it, but it’s hard to express. Yes, it is the smell when flint strikes sparks from steel, so it is a smoky flavor but with NO smell of burning wood. Closer to an ozone smoke. Mineral-y.
I have a feeling that if I gave you a glass of that screw-capped Aussie un-oaked Chardonnay that I bought a case of a few years ago your eyebrows would go up and you’d say “Ah!” Darn, I have forgotten the name of it. I think it had a frog on the label??
For me the gunflint smell is at the core of what Chardonnay tastes like but if you mess with it you cover it up. Sweetness, buttery flavors, vanilla, all make it impossible to taste the true grape flavors.
(After some Googling) – OK, I was conflating 2 wines. There ARE good Aussie unoaked chards but the frog one is Californian, Toad Hollow.
I’ve wondered if it was associated with sulfur additions. I also wonder how many people actually know what gun flint smells like these days. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
I know where I can get some and we are tasting Chablis this Saturday so maybe an experiment is in order.
I’ve belatedly been turned on to Chablis recently and have been stocking up on value chablis from Tremblay and Chenevieres.
I wouldn’t say that Chablis has gunflint aromas or tastes for me, but I can see why people would chose that word. For me, I do think there are definite “steely” or wet-granite components. The acidity in the wine probably help account for that type of structure in the mouth.
sulfur from winemaking
I don’t believe the sulfur theory. Why don’t you taste it in ALL wines, or all white wines??
And it really doesn’t taste like sulfur or smell like it.
I think one reason why Geri Tashian isn’t getting it, is that probably it’s harder to perceive in Grand Cru Chablis, it is a mere undertone, and there is a lot of other stuff going on in the wine. While the gunflint note is something that I like, I think perhaps it is maximized in low end Chablis from lesser vintages.
So if all you drink is Grand Cru Chablis from really good vintages, you aren’t going to notice it.
I like Frank’s description. I’ve definitely gotten what I refer to as gunflint (yes, have smelled the real thing when it’s been “ignited”! “smell of sparkler” wouldn’t be too far off) in burg whites, but more often with Batard and Chevalier Montrachet than with Chablis. And it’s not the sulphur (roasted peanut is how that manifests for me, have seen it in some younger higher-end burgs, I think as they try to combat premox) thing either, very different sensation—mostly aromatic for my marks vs. something that’s on the palate.
I pick up that gunflint aroma in a lot of young Chablis, which I had attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to reduction as it seems to dissipate some after opening.
Gunflint is a smoky-slightly metallic odor and flavor and has been associated with the sulfur containing thiol (also called mercaptan) benzenemethanethiol, which is generated by yeast during fermentation. It has also been associated with a toast-smoky aroma in some Champagne (many other molecules are also associated with a toasted aroma in wine). A significant percent of the population do not smell or taste various thiols at the concentrations found in wine, and benzenemethanethiol is likely one of the thiols that may not be detected by some people. Its odor and flavor has been described mostly in certain white varieties and particularly their varietal wines. While benzenemethanethiol is a thiol, it is not one usually associated with reduction odors, though it behaves like other thiols and will oxidize with aeration to a non-aromatic (in wine) disulfide causing the gunflint aroma to resolve after some aeration.
The place where I find “gunflint” in white wines more than anyplace else is - THE LOIRE VALLEY -
I’ve had many great Sauvignon Blancs from Sancerre and Pouilly Fume that had the redolent smell of gunflint and to a lesser extent, chiseled stone -
Frank - I think the problem is the note that you rec’d.
He wants “fresh fruit and minerality”, not gunflint.
Fruit we know. We can buy peaches, plums, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, etc.
“Minerality” is another one of those terms, like “gunflint”, that evokes something that isn’t really there. He’s not tasting gunflint, whatever that might even be. Flint is a kind of quartz isn’t it? So it’s not volatile and we wouldn’t smell it or taste it. But we may have an idea of what we think it might taste like if it really had a taste. It’s like the entire class of minerals that means “minerality”. We associate it with an image, perhaps Daniel Boone and his Kentucky long rifle, and maybe that scent/taste image includes the primer that fired the shot, so it’s not really the flint so much as the burnt gunpowder.
Or maybe it’s what we think we taste because we have too few words in our vocabulary to describe certain tastes, flavors, and aromas.
I think his argument doesn’t have an answer.
But, FWIW, I think chardonnay is on its own, a fairly insipid grape. It’s what we do to it that makes it interesting. We stir the lees, we put it in wood and make it soft or we don’t and we keep it “steely”. We let it go thru malolactic fermentation or we don’t and then we taste “minerals”. We do whatever we want to it and it responds with something new. It’s a cool grape in that respect - lacking its own assertive personality, it becomes whatever we want it to be.
Sounds like something that should be investigated on Manswers.
Cheers.
Greg, 1) Geri is a lady and 2) flint and steel produce a very distinctive aroma when struck to make a spark.
If you taste a few non-malo unoaked Chardonnays I think you would have some trouble believing that the grape is “insipid.” Nearly every winery in California makes insipid wine from it but that is not the fault of the grape.
I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face but nobody is ever “tasting” gunflint. Your tongue tastes sensations, the number of which is still under debate but generally include the following sensations: bitter, sweet, salty, sour, unami (“savoriness”) and a few others.
I give little credit to the article linked in the first post when I read stuff like “I have no memory of ever licking a stone” - it just shows the person writing this has no clue what is really going on with her senses. As soon as people understand that what they “taste” is actually what they smell, things start to make a lot more sense.
Gunflint typically relates to the metallic/smoky smell of stone vs metal (or stone vs stone even).
What also amazes me to no end with these articles is that people apparently think everybody has been created equal, and because one person in the world (who also happens to be a “journalist”) can’t reproduce some feat, then nobody can, especially when it comes down to perception. It would be the same as me saying that I can’t bench press 200 pounds, so obviously nobody on this planet can.
Well, this wasn’t an article in a scientific journal. It was a sales pitch for Chablis from the Burgundy Wine Company, and when I wrote her she replied “mostly I was just (kind of) thinking out loud and having some fun.”
In fact when I bought my first bottles of Chablis, it was low end stuff and I really learned to love the flintyness of it. While Grand Cru Chablis is delicious, I tend to miss the mineral aspects in all that ripeness.
If you taste a few non-malo unoaked Chardonnays I think you would have some trouble believing that the grape is "insipid.
Tasted many from many countries. Maybe insipid is the wrong word, like gunflint, but compare it to something like Rhine riesling, gwertz, sauv blanc, and it’s nowhere as full of aroma and flavor.
Striking flint and steel to make a spark is more than the gunflint alone isn’t it? But if that’s the sensation, I agree w Berry. And if winemakers use sulfur, you do taste it in all their wines initially. Then they’re bottled and shipped and the sulfur subsides. A lot depends on both the winemaking and the wine - in some cases you pick up lingering sulfur for a long time, in other cases, it dissipates very quickly. I have bottles where the winemaker killed the wine with sulfur and I don’t think it will ever go away, which is why we no longer import it.
On one hand I often prefer some specific 1er cru vineyards (e.g. Séchets) to some Grands Crus for their intense minerality. On the other hand certani GC are more likely to exhibit minerality, as are some producers, etc. I remember a 1998 Fèvre Grenouilles which was just incredible, at least for those who love their chablis to be all vertical, focused acidity and minerality.
I’ve tried to go down this route with pencil lead/graphite/pencil shavings since it’s a confusing set of terms–are we talking about pencil shavings (cedar), the graphite (not aromatic), or the china clay (kaolin) mixed with the graphite? I think it was John Woodward who suggested kaolin. Anyway, not many agreed with my POV, but I came away thinking that probably there is a meaning that is understood more than a specific aroma/taste.
I recently read a very interesting interpretation of minerality posed by Clark Smith.
Funny, I see this descriptor most frequently with Jean-Francois Coche’s wines, which I don’t like because I think they’re overoaked, generally. So, I think of it as an over toasty oaking element.
I’m quite persuaded that both gunflint/steely and most other mineral tones in wine are the result of reduced sulphur compunds. This neatly ties in elements of terroir, as, rather than the discredited notion that ‘minerals’ are absorbed through the roots, made manifest in the grapes and then the wine (plainly nonsense), it accommodates the nutritional properties of a site and soil and their interaction with (potentially ambient) yeasts via fermentation to produce identifiable flavour characteristics. In addition, the reductive nature of lees ageing can be brought into play.