Great discussion. It seems like “Sappy” is a good example of why it is probably better (if we assume the goal of the TN is to convey useful info to the reader) to use more sensory based words rather than words which can summarize or convey several meanings. If a wine is has pine aroma, say that. If it is viscous, good to note. Out of balance with more alc and not enough acid and/or tannin? Good info. Sappy? Well, if you want to use that word still convey useful info, it seem from the discussion that you will have to tell us what you mean by it. In which case, how much help is it?
Taking it farther, I have seen words like muscular, reassuring and generous used as wine descriptors on another board. To me, those types of words in the context of TN would likely mean different things to different people.
A lot of this assumes that the way the terms were used originally was actually correct. What you are describing as “classical” minerality may be more related to reduction or over-sulfuring of the wine. The latter especially would make sense since high acid wines will have more free SO2 for the same total dose compared to low acid wines, and probably measuring pH to determine SO2 dosage was less common several decades ago. I’m fairly certain that many aromas attributed to terroir are more related to various fermentation yeasts, with Brett being one famous example. Does it really serve anyone to attribute the smell of fertilizer to the soil and countryside when really it is the action of a yeast?
I think there is plenty of interaction that helps to determine the meaning of the terms. And some are simply pathologically flawed as they have no commonly understood analog. If the wine community creates a term that conflicts with its own common usage, they are the ones fighting the uphill battle. Sappy seems a perfect example. There seems to be a unique meaning when used by wine professionals, but it is divergent from the common uses (the stuff that comes out of a tree, something overly sentimental). In the interest of communicating, I’d hope the wine world would move towards more direct descriptions.
I do not intend to shift this from sappy to mineral, but: Many posters here and many critics like Laube and Suckling love to toss the word “mineral” into tasting notes of big red wines. I can more easily understand a red with a sense of minerality; kind of like a sense of place that varies region to region. But to smell or taste “mineral” just seems ridiculous to me. Can anyone explain what this means? “Mineral” in a Napa Cab, or “mineral” in a Cali Pinot? Rocks are generally not volatile, and I understand the tactile idea or even certain tastes, but I’m curious.
If Laube or Suckling do it, then it must be the accepted norm and everyone else should follow them.
I’m much more with Clark Smith’s interpretation (don’t have the links at hand) that interprets minerality as interaction of charged species with your taste receptors. Acidity is mostly sensing of H+ ions, and salt is sensed by Na+ receptors. It’s not a stretch to hypothesize that other ionic species can be sensed, and perhaps this is what we perceive as minerality.
I don’t really understand how minerality is volatilized either. Unless there is grinding or a chemical reaction like striking flint involved. If it’s the second case, then minerality seems a misnomer since the byproduct you smell is not the original mineral.
I think the dirty little secret of tasting notes is that often, “mineral” is tossed in to a note describing a fat wine for the purpose of rationalizing one’s love for bombastic drinks. It’s probably done both consciously and subconsciously. After all, who can challenge “mineral”? And what does it realistically mean?
Disclaimer: This does not mean that “mineral” is never appropriate, nor does it mean I am anti-minerality as a descriptor or as a wine characteristic.
“One source of confusion about minerality is that there are at least three aspects of wine flavor for which some tasters can latch on to no better term.” Speculations About Minerality - Wines Vines Analytics" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Huh? If it was consistently used among knowledgeable people it might nonetheless have been incorrect? I don’t really follow you there.
As for the chemical nature of the smells, I don’t think it really matters. Road tar is a mercaptan, as I recall (hell, it sometimes seems like everything is a mercaptan!) but road tar is a meaningful term, I think, because people know the smell from other contexts and recognize the description regardless of the chemistry.
I’m sure you’re right that some things described as terroir are indigenous yeasts, Brett and so on. It was years before I realized that what I considered the signature of Northern Rhone syrah was simply reduction!
That said, if you’ve tasted enough Burgundy, you know there’s a signature to Chambolle Musigny that’s different from archetypical Gevrey or Volnay, and until someone figures out the chemistry, it’s perfectly fair to describe something as being typical of the particular commune (i.e., typical of that terroir).
I’m not sure I follow the first half here but I think we’re agreed on sappy.
Beats me! That’s why I opened up this thread. I’ve seen it used in print but it isn’t a term that I’ve used or one that I recall being used in my presence. I think I had a vague impression that it referred to what I would describe as grapiness – fresh, primary, probably relatively high acid wines like a good cru Beaujolais or Barbera. But that was only a vague impression. I certainly wouldn’t think of anything like pine sap since (thank heavens) I can’t ever recall wine tasting like that. That definition brings to mind Pine-Sol and it pains my sinuses just to think about it.
This wouldn’t be there first offense against our language or intelligent wine commentary.
Personally I’ve never assumed that the “minerality” that I once thought I understood was actually connected to flint or minerals (though Wes’s interesting link above suggests that there is some plausible connection to the chemistry of wet rocks, among other things). But it was used by many people for a certain, usually subtle scent you often got from cool climate, high acid whites.
I think that’s exactly what Greg means – he can correct me if I’m wrong. Once upon a time, many of the most knowledgeable astronomers in the world were consistent in their belief that the world was flat; as it turned out, they were wrong – despite the fact that they were knowledgeable, and despite the fact that that opinion was consistently held (or “used”, if you will).
Yep, that’s what I was getting at. If it turns out a commonly accepted ‘fact’ is a misconception, then the experts didn’t have it right. Didn’t those Beaucastel folks argue forever that a combination of Mourvedre and terroir gave their wine a characteristic smell? Yet it was eventually apparent that the wines were prone to Brett. I guess it’s not precisely fair to disconnect Brett from the terroir–it exists in a given region and it’s expression seems tied to the character of the fruit itself. But attributing a ‘feral character’ to earth and the grape alone was not correct, either.
Maybe John’s argument is something philosophical like “what you believe becomes truth” or something like it. I just don’t buy into that thinking.
No, my argument is that language is a set of conventions about usage to which speakers have to adhere most of the time. It doesn’t make any sense to say, “everyone was wrong using black to mean the darkest color, it actually meant the brightest color” (i.e., white is the new black).
Meanings can and do shift over time, to be sure, some words are ambiguous, others have multiple senses, so the picture isn’t simple. Wine terminology is certainly one of those areas where the application isn’t always clear. But if there is an accepted usage it can’t be “disproved” and deemed wrong with hindsight like a fact can be.
(As for Beaucastel, their argument was that mourvedre thereproduced some compounds that were very close to those produced by brett – it was a specific chemical explanation, not a resort to some vague reference to terroir. Whether it’s right or just a cover up I have no idea.)
I think before we delve much further into your theory, John, we should find out if your thinking (see quote below) is accurate.
I > think > > a lot of these terms had pretty widely accepted meanings in the trade once upon a time.
So, do you “think,” or are you “sure?” If you’re sure, what is your evidence?
Again, I think these “what does ___ mean to you?” threads would all develop as this one has, regardless of what “___” is; even if someone speaks in terms of structure (i.e.: acidic, tannic, long/medium/short finish), although those terms may mean roughly the same thing to all people, people nonetheless can interpret the same wine different within those terms (i.e.: one person may call the wine tannic and well-balanced, whereas another person may call it round and fat). Therefore, all tasting notes are completely worthless and anyone who writes one is wasting their time.
…
on a related point: Is it a fallacy to believe that the “main purpose” of someone writing a tasting note is to convey information to an audience other than themself? I would posit, “yes.”
John, I’m trained in science, not philosophy. Your analogy about reversing the meaning of black and white just doesn’t have much to do with what I’m talking about. If certain conventional wisdoms are later proven wrong by improved scientific understanding, then said conventional wisdoms always were wrong. Objective reality is not up to a vote and is not a popularity contest. Reductionist scientific methodologies have their limitations, but when they are right, they are virtually fact. This is very different than language evolving by accepted usage. When a theory is accepted, it invalidates prior misconceptions.
You will probably say that minerality is just the language that developed and any word can acquire a certain meaning by repeated usage, but in reality it seems to be an attempt to link the soil and/or fruit composition to an organoleptic sensation. If ‘struck flint’ minerality turns out to have nothing to do with mineral composition, then from a rational scientific perspective it is misnamed. Just as geocentric theories and flat earth hypotheses–which seemed sensible at the time–are rejected as false and never were correct even when popular.
Testing of several of the controversial vintages of Beaucastel showed high levels of Brett byproducts, at least in the samples tested.
Hi, hate to hijacked a very involved thred, but could you please clarify the source of these tests? I just had dinner with Pierre Perrin a few weeks ago, and the topic of Brett was brought up. He told us that he personally did studies of every vintage going back to the 1970s, and only found evidence of Brett in one particular instance. His own theory is that the reduction often found in Mouvedre heavy wines is often confused for Brett by drinkers.
another definition of “sap” would be a guy like me who bought about 50 cases of 96 white Burgundies only to discover premox and have little to no financial recourse!
I think we need to distinguish between different types of descriptors of wine.
If someone asserts that a wine tastes of brett, or reduced sulfur or reflects the taste of the soil of the particular vineyard, that is a literal, factual assertion about the chemical origin of the sensory experience of the wine and can be proven true or false by chemical analysis (though it would be more difficult in the last case). Similarly, we might be wrong about whether a wine is tannic or acidic; sometimes people can mistake one for the other and I think we’d agree that the chemical analysis would be the determinant of the truth since these purport to be factual descriptions.
That’s quite different from terms such as “sappy” or “minerality.” (I realize some people take minerality more literally; I never have.) I take these to be attempts to express the sensory experience by analogy to other sensory experiences – the faint scent one gets from water flowing over rocks, perhaps, in the case of minerality.
The same would be true describing a wine as having “road tar” or “rose petals.” Using those terms doesn’t imply that the wines have those ingredients, nor does it necessarily imply that the wine has the same chemical components that those things have (though it might). It should mean that smelling them brings to mind those other aromas.
Another example: I use “grapy” for wines that have a very primary quality that reminds me of Welch’s Concord grape juice. (Think young cru Beajolais, Barbera or Dolcetto.) At one very literal level, calling a wine “grapy” seems sort of meaningless since they’re all made from grapes, but I think people can grasp what “grapy” means.
If we, as a linguistic community, agree on analogical/metaphorical terms like “sappy,” “minerality” or “grapy” consistently enough that we know what one another means and agree often enough on the experience (admittedly a big if when it comes to wine, given different tasters’ sensitivities, predelictions and bottle variation), these aren’t descriptions that can be proven wrong or right. The terms are actually defined by how we use them, like “black” and “white.”
