Wine tasting has been predominantly ascribed to a western European palate. I challenge that sangiovese based wines are actually more of a tamarind note that it is sour cherry. But most European and anglos North Americans don’t have tamarind in their diet. Basically white people don’t know what tamarind taste like. The closet thing they know is sour cherries. Which also is a higher tax bracket that can afford to know the taste. But for south east Asians and Latin Americans the flavor of tamarind is innate culturally. I find it more accurate than sour cherry for sangio. Not to say cherry doesn’t show up as part of the spectrum, but tamarind is much more precise. Yeah, I went there, come at me, but make sure you cracked a tamarind pod and ate the pulp and spit out the seed before you say anything.
When you hang around an international wine community (on a board like this), it quickly becomes clear that the descriptors people use in their notes are based on their local products. Which makes sense. Everyone has different taste references. Although none of the fruits and flowers stuff is meant to be all that precise, if you ask me.
I eat more tamarind than sour cherry. But, I don’t drink much Sangiovese these days! Will have to keep the comparison in mind…
I’ve never cooked with tamarind pods but use paste for a Pad Thai dish that we love. I’m sure there are differences in paste vs pods but I’ve always thought tamarind (paste) while sour had more of dark fruit profile (dates?) than the red fruit profile I associate with Sangiovese.
Might make more sense to me with valpolicella or amarone.
Seems like a weird thing to fight about. As Rahsaan said, we all have different taste references, and I don’t really think any wine tastes exactly the fruit it references
I’ve cooked Pad Thai with tamarind paste myself. The classic sauce is a beautiful sweet/sour/salty blend. Wine, Sangiovese or whatever, has never crossed my mind while enjoying it though, now it goes on the bucket list to try.
This post brings another common flavor note to mind. Growing up in Asia with different kinds of hawthorn based snacks, this flavor in wine comes naturally to me. Now having lived in N. America for decades I’ve never come across any food with hawthorn. Is it safe to surmise that TNs with hawthorn mention written by people without much exposure to Asian food culture is drawing from a learned experience, like a WSET tasting kit?
Hawthorn is native to the UK (among other places), so more common there than in North America (where it is not native, and is uncommon in my experience). Do you see British folks more likely to use it in TNs?
That’s new to me. Will keep in mind next time reading TNs!
How do the Brit eat it? I probably never tasted raw hawthorns but know it’s very sour. The Asian snacks I mentioned all have it in candied forms.
They do the same, for jellies, but also in some savory preps:
I think sometimes Sangiovese tastes exactly like cherry, in an oddly literal way.
Maybe it sometimes also tastes like tamarind.
Unless it’s green crunchy tamarind in sweet syrup, the tamarind tartness is too powdery for me. Acerola is closer to sagiovese than tamarind for me with that juicy, berries like tang.
Hi Javier,
I’m an anglo North American in a higher tax bracket and I disagree. To me (and De gustibus non est disputandum) Sangiovese tastes nothing like tamarind.
To me, tamarind is too “orange” - it’s a dry, citrus note with a strong cumin radiance at the heart and caramel around the edges. Sangiovese has some of the earthy/woodsy accord of cumin but the fruit tone is overwhelmingly red.
Thanks,
Zachary
Precisely why I use the Red Dye No. 3 descriptor when describing color. 
It shows up in Rioja also if you drink those. Hibiscus and tamarind.
Tamarind has a bright sharp acidity but also smells pungent and woodsy. That acidity is not fresh like it is from citrus fruits. Sangio definitely resemble that profile. Have you tried chamoy before? Chianti has that flavor in bunches. And yes there are red fruit flavors in sangio, but there’s more to it than just that and tamarind shows up in a big way.
Woodsy? Acidity not fresh? What kind of Sangiovese you drink?
The paste is not as bright as fresh pods. But if you use the paste to make tamarind juice and you taste that and then a sangio I think you’ll see the match.
You should try some tamarind
Have a jar of the paste in my fridge right now, so familiar with the taste. Getting pods is quite impossible around here, unfortunately.
However, to me, Sangiovese has the brightest of acidities in reds. And in my books the woodier a Sangiovese is, the worse it is.
For sure sangio is the brightest. Tamarind is bright but not fresh like a citrus. Maybe woodsy is not the right word. But if you have some paste, boil it and make a juice. Add a tiny bit of sugar and try it. Take note not just the acidity but all the other flavors of it. I think you’ll agree it’s chianti like.
Why sugar?
And I don’t get the “not fresh like citrus” thing. Sure, red wines are not sharp in acidity as some citrus fruits, but to me, a proper, classic Sangiovese definitely is very fresh and zippy. Like lingonberries, cranberries and sour cherries fresh.
I’m pretty sure that to me, tamarind tastes like tamarind, not like Sangiovese. There are so many different iterations of Sangiovese that it’s impossible to boil down to “it tastes like tamarind”. That’s why I’d rather describe every Sangiovese I taste individually. Sure, there might be some Sangioveses that have elements of tamarind - as much as there are Sangioveses that don’t exhibit the typical sour cherry note - but I wouldn’t go and tell people that all Sangioveses are more tamarind than sour cherry. That sounds absolutely bonkers.