C’mon. I still don’t know what tasting notes that say “phenolic” mean. I made up my own definition, but I have no idea if it relates to what others are using this term to mean. Aren’t there some bloggers or wine writers out there who can comment (Gilman, where are you?)?
Benzaldehyde? I’ve associated a sort of biting on apple pips / marzipan (not in a good way) / bitter almond flavour with “high solids” fermentation, which presumably happens with skins on. Maybe that’s not what you’re getting or mean. I’ve also used “phenolic” when there is a sharp, petrochemical edge to a wine - e.g. a lot of oz rieslings.
Oliver:
At the risk of descending even further into pedantry, I’ll first point out the “aldehyde” is a class of chemical compounds (producing as diverse a set of aromas as almond, cilantro, and cinnamon) and so Tom’s chemists would probably gnash their teeth to hear one talk of the “aroma of aldehyde”?
When wine people say a wine is aldehydic they typically mean it shows some signs of oxidation, acetaldehyde being one of the important results of the oxidizing of wine. The bruising of an apple no doubt sparks oxidation, both enzymatic and chemical,
and so the use of “bruised apple” for oxidized and/or aldehydic notes is not uncommon. I don’t know how accurate it is, though. I think that a nuttied, sherried tone might be closer to “acetaldehyde” or a purely aldehydic aroma. Bruised apple seems to me to be a character that happens when a highly phenolic substance begins to oxidize (apples being noticeably high in phenols).
Maybe our “bruised apple” (and Tom’s skin fermented whites) should be called “aldehydically phenolic”, or “phenolically aldehydic”?
