Wednesday Wine 101

Q.

If I smell apples or cherries in my wine, does that mean apples or cherries are in there?

A.

Unless you’re drinking and apple or cherry wine, than, no, the only fruit in your wine is grapes.

We get asked this question quite a bit: why do wines, made of grapes, offer aromas of other fruits or spices?

There’s a couple of things at work here: one, the certain grapes have certain scents that naturally occur. Riesling has a distinctive petrol note that’s just part of the grape, while Cabernet Sauvignon smells of blackberries, for example.

Additionally, the yeasts that winemakers choose to ferment the grape juice into wine can have properties that will promote some aromas and inhibit others. Finally, barrel aging – and what types of barrels are used – will impact what you smell in the wine.

Also, everybody has a different aroma memory bank as we all have different sets of experiences. Our Oma has a certain tree in her backyard that lets off a spicy, earthy scent; very often we’ll pick this up in a wine we’re drinking, but we don’t expect you to know what the tree in our Oma’s backyard smells like – and if you do know, we want to know what you were doing there.