{"id":7053,"date":"2013-04-06T22:16:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T22:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=7053"},"modified":"2013-04-06T22:16:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T22:16:28","slug":"the-mystery-of-soils-and-wines-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/the-mystery-of-soils-and-wines-part-2","title":{"rendered":"The mystery of soils and wines, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Minerality is, for me, one of the most interesting concepts in the world of wine.<\/p>\n

\u2018Minerality\u2019 is a really useful descriptor; many of us use it frequently in our tasting notes. Yet it\u2019s also a term that means different things to different people. I know what I mean when I encounter some characteristic in a wine that makes me think \u2018mineral\u2019, but I can\u2019t be sure that when others use the term they are referring to the same thing.<\/p>\n

And minerality may well be a sort of syndrome, like some medical conditions, when different underlying factors cause symptoms that look quite similar. I also suspect that it\u2019s sometimes used as a way of praising a deliciously complex wine, in the same way that \u2018long\u2019 is often thrown into a tasting note when people really like a wine but have run out of more concrete descriptors.<\/p>\n

A recent article by Sally Easton in the Drinks Business rather put the boot into minerality. She quoted the work of Jordi Ballester who has done lexical analysis on tasting notes where people use the term, and found that people mean different things by it. And she also quoted Alex Maltman, an academic geologist, who correctly pointed out that mineral ions are only taken up by vines at very low levels, and that we’d be unlikely to taste them in the wine.<\/p>\n

But I think there’s more to be said on the topic.<\/p>\n

Frequently, you will see on the side of a bottle of mineral water the different levels of mineral ions present in that water. These depend on the source of the water, and different mineral waters tend to have subtly different flavours if they are compared side-by-side. Presumably, these differences in flavour, subtle as they are, are down to the mineral composition, although there are plenty who will contend that most mineral ions don\u2019t taste of anything.<\/p>\n

If a soil has mineral ions in it, these will be taken up by the roots passively along with the water that the roots sequester. However, roots are also able to take up mineral ions selectively in certain circumstances. Some people object that the typical differences in mineral ion concentration, such as those found in different mineral waters, would not be noticeable against the backdrop of the other flavours present in wine. However, the levels present in wine seem to be considerably higher.<\/p>\n

\u2018Minerals can be detected while tasting a wine,\u2019 says Olivier Humbrecht, one of Alsace\u2019s leading winegrowers, famous for his advocacy of biodynamic viticulture. \u2018It is the fraction on the palate that makes the wine taste more saline or salty. High acids or high tannins do not mean that the wine has lots of minerality. High salt contents make the acidity more \u201csavoury\u201d and therefore less aggressive. Good minerality makes salivate and makes one want to have another sip or glass or bottle.\u2019<\/p>\n

Gerd Stepp, a consultant winemaker, has some interesting perspectives of minerality. He broadly falls into the literalist camp. \u2018For me there are two forms of\u00a0minerality\u00a0that influence a wine\u2019s qualities and characteristics,\u2019 he explains. \u2018Firstly, perhaps most obviously, the wine\u2019s mineral content, which is about taste and texture when tasting a wine. It\u2019s much like when drinking mineral water of a high mineral\/salt content, there is a flavour\/taste and an almost \u2018osmotic\u2019 experience, perhaps similar to drinking sea water, just much less concentrated and less salty.\u2019 Stepp thinks that mineral waters taste differently, and can sometimes even seem a little salty, depending on to source.<\/p>\n

Stepp notes that according to his reference books the mineral content of wines fluctuates between 1.5 g\/litre and 4 g\/litre.\u00a0\u2018It seems the soil\u2019s exchange capacity of ions correlates with the mineral concentration of a wine,\u2019 he states. \u2018Also, a cold-stabilised wine has lower potassium content than the same wine\u00a0unstabilized, and it tastes different and has less flavour, perhaps even less complexity.\u2019<\/p>\n

For Stepp, there is also a second form of minerality. \u2018I am certain there is an influence on the wine\u2019s flavour characteristics through the geology\/soils where the grapes are grown, which correlates to the\u00a0terroir\u2019s unique\u00a0minerality,\u2019 he claims. \u2018I understand researchers trying to prove that vines don’t actually take up minerals from the soils and that these minerals\u00a0aren\u2019t in the finished product. But how can it be explained that wines made from the same grape variety, vintage and region have such different qualities depending on the soils? It must have an influence, detectable or not. Also, where would those 1.5\u20134g\/L of minerals come from? But I don’t believe that we just taste the actual minerals from the soils, it is\u00a0definitely\u00a0much more complex.\u2019<\/p>\n

There is a very interesting pair of scientific studies in support of this notion of minerality in wine. Back in 2000, a plant researcher from Germany, Andreas Peuke, grew Riesling vines in pots containing three different soils from Franconian vineyards: Loess, Muschelkalk (sea shell lime) and Keuper. He collected sap from the vines and analysed its chemical composition, and found differences among the different soil types. In Muschelkalk soil, carbon, nitrogen, and calcium were present in the greatest concentrations. Sulfur, boron, magnesium, sodium, and potassium were greatest in Keuper, and the concentrations in Loess soil were intermediate. Aqueous extraction of the soils resulted in a two-fold greater concentration of total solutes in Keuper extract compared with Muschelkalk, and more than threefold than in Loess.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, Californian winegrower Randall Grahm carried out some interesting experiments. In his quest to try to understand minerality better, he actually put some rocks into tanks of wine. However, in this case the rocks were in a wine environment at low pH, and are therefore likely to release more \u2018minerals\u2019 than if they had been in the ground. And the rocks also had the side effect of raising the pH of the wine, which can change the flavour. \u2018Our experiments were incredibly simplistic and gross in comparison to the very subtle chemistry that occurs in mineral extraction in real soils,\u2019 Grahm recalls.\u00a0\u2018We simply took interesting rocks, washed them very well, smashed them up and immersed them in a barrel of wine for a certain period, until we felt that the wine had extracted some interesting flavors and we were able to discern significant differences between the various types.\u2019<\/p>\n

Grahm saw major changes in the texture and mouthfeel of the wine, as well as dramatic differences in aromatics, length and persistence of flavour.\u00a0\u2018In every case, low doses of minerals added far more complexity and greater persistence on the palate.\u00a0It is my personal belief that wines richer in minerals just present way differently.\u2019 He adds that, \u2018they seem to have a certain sort of nucleus or density around their center; they are gathered, focused, cohered the way a laser coheres light.\u00a0It is a different kind of density relative to tannic density, somehow deeper in the wine than the tannins.\u2019<\/p>\n

So, I reckon there is still some life in this literalist understanding of minerality. More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minerality is, for me, one of the most interesting concepts in the world of wine. \u2018Minerality\u2019 is a really useful descriptor; many of us use it frequently in our tasting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7060,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053\/revisions\/7060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}