I’ve recently had some lovely examples of Sauv Blanc, a variety that I am not super experience with. However, I think I am particularly sensitive to that characteristic cat pee flavor, which I am not fond of. I started wondering about this flavor more tonight after a popping a Cali Sauv Blanc that had few characteristics other than cat pee (2017 Merryvale from Napa), and naturally turned to you all;
First of all- What is it: I mean, the chemical name? The college chemistry major and former high school chemistry teacher in me wants to know.
What causes it’s expression? Personally, I’ve tasted it most in wines out of California and New Zealand, which is funny because California and New Zealand SBs have otherwise such different flavor profiles. I’ve noticed it much less in Old World wines, though my sample size is admittedly small. What regions have you found to have more or less cat pee flavors?
How much does vintage variation count, and what vintage conditions specifically bring it out vs not? I had a lovely 2018 Quvira Fig Tree vineyard SB from Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma that I absolutely loved. So I went out and got three bottles of the 2016, which my local place had on sale. Yikes! Cat pee city!!
Does bottle age tend change the expression of cat pee over time? Does age tend to bring it out, or quiet it down?
Finally, I really do like Sauv Blanc, the flavors can be lovely, but the cat pee can ruin a wine that I otherwise am really enjoying. Do you have any other advice for choosing SB wines that I’ll enjoy? Like I said, I think I’m pretty sensitive to it, because the flavor is overpowering to me sometimes, and when I look at CellarTracker, there might be no mention of it in any tasting notes at all. So checking CT before purchase can be helpful, but isn’t foolproof. For context my favorites so far have been Cotat Monts Damnees, aged White Bordeaux, and that 2018 Quivra Fig Tree vineyard. I recently spent a decent amount for a 2014 Dagueneau Fume de Pouilly, 2014 Ygrec, and 2001 Laville Haut Brion. Hope they don’t end up tasting like a littler box!
Pretty sure it’s a pyrazine thing. Pyrazines are the vegetal / grassy / bell peppery compounds in most sauvignon family grapes. Definitely comes off funkier in sauv blancs and cab francs than it does in cab sauv. Somm codeword for it is “blackcurrant bud” or “box tree.”
No experience with higher quality versions like daguenea or ygrec or classified bdx but I’d love to see how it comes off in quality examples.
Also, I’ve heard that winemakers can control how much of a pyrazine influence a wine has. Not sure if its ripeness when picking or if its soak/skin contact related. In theory, cooler vintages of cab are more likely to show the pyrazine quality, so vintage variation makes some sense. Most cali sauv blanc I’ve tasted seem less cat pee-y than sancerres and those noticeably less than NZ examples.
Interesting. I always thought of pyridines as bell pepper notes, and I’ve never noticed cat pee flavors in Cab Franc or Cab Sauv. Though now that you mention it, I can see a resemblance between bell peppers and cat pee. Damn…am I going to be eat peppers from now on?
It’d be interesting to hear how cat pee became the choice descriptor for one particular variety. Someone important really didn’t like sauv blanc I imagine. Barnyard and brettanomyces really don’t sound that bad by comparison. Chenin can be so much funkier and weirder but “wet wool” doesn’t sound anywhere near as bad. Rubbery rieslings? To me, albarino has some of the most immediately turnoffy day old flat beer tastes, but there’s no iconic descriptor for it.
pyrazine does cover a range of vegetal and grassy flavors that manifest differently with different grapes. Cab sauv seems to be able to escape it fairly often, i suspect as a result of warmer climates leading to less pronounced pyrazine, but bell pepper is pretty accurate. Cab franc gets a darker, funkier kind of pepper, like serrano, but has more of the cat pee grassy thing to it than cab sauv ever does. If you’ve ever tried a cold climate chinon-esque cab franc w crazy age that Serrano pepper turns into an almost sriracha-y hot sauce water kinda thing. Sauv blanc seems to get the most pronounced pyrazines and has such a weirdly unintegrated crackly acid structure that they’re almost hard to confuse with other grapes. I imagine that because of their crazy popularity right now there’s a lot of examples of bad winemaking driving that. I’ve had Merry Edwards a lot lately as a nicer example and its definitely got those pyrazines toned down
I cant find my TN but once I smelled urine, public men’s washroom, after my wine glass was empty. This was from a red wine. Would this also be pyrazine?
This thread brought to mind a small gathering at a co-worker’s house at which his wife, knowing of my interest in wine, had gone to some effort to put together a variety of offerings to please her guests. I detected some level of stress from her regarding the sufficiency of her efforts to which I responded by showing my appreciation for her offerings. One of the bottles opened was a SB, and naturally the first thing out of my mouth was “aaah, cat pee” while enjoying the wine. The look on her face instantly made me regret saying that and flustered she quickly moved to open something else. My attempt at amelioration was “it’s supposed to smell like cat pee. It’s good”, her expression changed from one of mortification to confusion. Recovery ops continued on my part.
In my own experience, while I agree that NZ Sauv Blanc is (by far) the worst offender for cat pee (with maybe 70% showing some), I have experienced it less in Sancerre (maybe 15%?) than in Cali Sauv Blanc (probably 25%). That may simply be because I drink very little Cali Sauv Blanc (finding it generally bland and boring…along the lines of most Pinot Grigio), and so maybe I’ve just hit a couple of outliers. That said, I too have always assumed that “cat pee” in Sauv Blanc was similar to “bell pepper” in Cab Sauv, and thus perhaps related to ripeness, and one would expect Cali wines to be more ripe (and less herbal/green) than Sauv Blanc. However, if the two characteristics are NOT related to ripeness (and are caused by different chemical compounds as per Otto’s comment), then it would be interesting to know what specifically causes some wines to have more of this character.
Regarding the questions above as to where the “cat pee” descriptor comes from, to me it is quite obvious once you’ve smelled the real thing and then experienced it in a wine. It’s something I’ve smelled many times when walking outside, etc…While perhaps it could just as easily have been originally called “fox urine” or “animal urine”, it is a pungent and distinctive smell that typically means that an animal has peed nearby. I find many “wine descriptors” to be kind of random, arbitrary and sort of a “Rorschach test” (i.e. five people can describe a wine with five different descriptors, and may be aligned, at most, on one of them). But to me, “cat pee” (and “cork/TCA”) are both very distinct and difficult to describe in any other terms.
Did you read the article I posted? Especially chapters “Factors affecting thiol levels”, “Producing Sauvignon with elevated thiols” and “Preserving thiols” discuss the topic.
Lots of the cheaper NZ SB, which we drink fairly regularly, never shows cat pee. These wines probably have zero oak and lots of CO2 in them to keep them “fresh”.
I understand that thiols may also be present in craft beer, with different varieties of hops presenting different concentrations of thiols. Certainly have found grapefruit in New England style IPAs - don’t recall ever getting cat-pee, though.
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