If pinot completes ML why aren’t we seeing buttery popcorn notes?
Specific to chardonnay variety and ML?
I think it’s just how we perceive the complexities in wine. In this case, I suspect we don’t isolate the diacetyl character, so it shows more like butterscotch or something similar in a red wine. (Maybe even molasses?)
Buy really, ML does not necessitate significant diacetyl. Most wines, most Chards, go through ML. Prominent buttery character is usually a winemaker choice.
Thanks Wes,
I was under the assumption that full ML was responsible for the butter in chardonnay. Rumors were it was oak but those in the know said ML.
What Winemaker choice would create butter in those chardonnay based wines? TIA
Brig,
You going to be at dinner tomorrow night? I’ll give you my input then . . .
Cheers!
Brig - you can get it in reds and whites. Termanthia for example, often seems to have some of that - buttered toast and jam. I don’t think it’s 100% from ML in all cases.
Sometimes people confuse the influence of oak and of ML and they attribute effects to causes without knowing what they’re talking about. Most of all however, what Wes said. We don’t taste things in isolation. Things can taste very different depending on whether a molecule exists in isolation or in combination with various other things, and also the concentration of something can cause us to perceive it differently.
Plus the yeast may have an effect too.
For some reason I’ve been drinking a lot of Chardonnay recently and I’ve concluded that I don’t mind the buttery ones all that much but I do dislike the big honeydew melon types. Often they go together, but not always.
No can do homie. Uncle Russ is in town from PHX.
Great restaurant you’ll be at, btw. Enjoy.
Brig,
If you can go visit a Pinot producer in October or November, you can smell the popcorn butter while the malolactic fermentation is at its peak. Sometimes it happens right after the primary fermentation is dying down. It’s pretty amazing how similar the smell is to butter. But after the ML finishes, that buttery aroma quickly goes away. I’m of the “it’s not ML, it’s oak” camp when it comes to buttery Chardonnay. All of the Chards I make go through ML 100% (so that I don’t have to filter them), but I also try to not use any new oak, or if I can’t find enough used white barrels, as little new oak as possible. So, they don’t seem buttery at all.
By the way, I would be willling to go out on a limb and say 99 or 100% of the reds you drink have gone through ML. It’s just something that’s assumed with red wines, so we don’t talk about it like we do with whites.
It’s also worth pointing out: As ML bacteria consume malic acid, they produce Diacetyl (aka ‘butter’). Once the ML bacteria have finished consuming all the malic acid, they start consuming the Diacetyl, turning it into…uh I forget the name, but it’s not esp perceptible. So unless the winemaker does something (aka adds sulfur) the Diacetyl will go away (unless the ML bacteria die off early, which happens).
If you want to make a Diacetyl/buttery chard, you have to be on top of things and add sulfur before the ML bacteria begin consuming the Diacetyl. I agree with Ed, of course, that most butter in chard is a combination of type/amount of oak, lees stirring and ripeness.
Second hand from lots of conversations about the issue of buttery popcorn with winemakers - - -
First of all, almost all red wine goes through malo, so that’s not it. I once had a Carmenere from Argentina that didn’t and it tasted like grapefruit juice.
I’ve been told that the buttery popcorn flavor can be controlled by the winemaker through techniques like stirring the lees, because supposedly the lees can absorb some of the chemical that gives that flavor, so the greater the lees contact, the less the butter.
Then there’s ph. The ph of white wine is lower (higher acidity). When you consider that ph is an exponential scale, a white wine ph of 3.0 is not just 18% more acid than a red wine ph of 3.6. My chemistry class was 45 years ago, but I think that’s the difference between 10^-3 versus 10^-3.6 in free hydrogen, which is roughly four times as much free hydrogen in the white wine [Professor V - please verify that]. That can have a huge effect not only on the rest of the chemistry in the wine, but also on how the wine is perceived.
But what do I know? I just drink the stuff.
To expand on this, since “butter” and/or “buttered popcorn” aren’t commonly used red wine descriptors, many people subconsciously load their brains with the typical red wine descriptors, given the wine they’re tasting, and therefore leave out descriptors we commonly use solely for whites.
Well, this is a very useful descriptor for a red wine for me. I would avoid this Pinot like the plague…