Pancake notes with a hint of beans

November 13, 2009 11:49 AM

When a wine is described as having flavor "notes" is there any science behind that?

When a wine is described as having flavor "notes" is there any science behind that, or is it a bit of pretention coupled with the power of suggestion? For example, if a wine is described as having "blackberry notes", is that ever because the same components that combine to create the flavor of a blackberry can be found in that wine, or is it purely psychological--you read the description of the flavor, and that influences the taste buds?

posted by emelenjr to food & drink (16 comments total)

Subjectivity is not the same thing as suggestion.
posted by dersins at 11:52 AM on November 13, 2009

I can give my own anecdotal experience that its not psychological. My wife and I frequently taste first and read descriptions second and tend to notice we frequently overlap.
posted by bitdamaged at 12:02 PM on November 13, 2009

Different strains of yeast produce different chemicals as waste. These can take the form of esters and phenols and whatnot that are also present in other fruits.
posted by mkb at 12:07 PM on November 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

"When you say a white wine has a hint of apple or pear, or that a red wine has a berry-like character, it is because the esters in apples or pears or berries are present in the wine due to the extracurricular activities of the yeast. Speaking of extra activity, another good example can be seen in Chardonnays. If a Chard is "buttery," it is from the yeast working overtime and producing a compound called diacetyl—which also happens to give butter its flavor."
posted by zoomorphic at 12:07 PM on November 13, 2009 [5 favorites]

Sense of taste is variable. Some people really can taste what others cannot. I find I can generally pick out some but not all of the notes in the wine I buy. Blackberry is easy to pick up, as are metallic or earthy overtones.
posted by bearwife at 12:08 PM on November 13, 2009

Phenols in wine that are created through yeast during fermentation or aging in casks (often oak) produce in wine the same chemical compounds that result in the flavor or aroma in other foods.
posted by X-Himy at 12:11 PM on November 13, 2009

People with subtler palates than the average consumer's are the ones who detect these similarities in flavor. If you didn't know what you were looking for when you were drinking it, you might not notice that the wine happens to taste a little bit like, say, currants.

With any fermentation process, there are so many variables affecting the final result that you can only do so much to predict what certain concoctions will taste like. This is why wines from the same vineyard are slightly different from year to year -- you document the process, document the results you had, hypothesize about which factors contributed to which results, adjust the process ever so slightly, and then try again next year. The description that goes on the label basically articulates their analysis in terms that might appeal to the average consumer.
posted by hermitosis at 12:13 PM on November 13, 2009

I'm glad that other people have actual links that explain what is going on here. Hopefully this shows you that you can actually (try to) design a wine that will taste a certain way, with specific flavor components. Though certainly there are always surprises and variations, and I think this will always be a process of both great artistry and also of trial and error.
posted by hermitosis at 12:16 PM on November 13, 2009

There is a history of change in wine criticism description. In other words, the use of words about fruit to describe wine is just the latest iteration of a descriptive language that attempts to wrestle with the complexity of flavor in a sip of wine. I read an article about this several years ago on Arts and Letters Daily.

On a related note, the differences in the words used to describe white and red wines is almost certainly a product of temperature and suggestion, as at least one study has shown that people will use words traditionally associated with red wine "jammy, raspberry, etc." to describe a warm tinted white wine, while the same wine served chilled and white will elicit talk of "flinty" flavors. Here is Jonah Lehrer on the subjectivity of wine.

However, there may well be another level of description that is less dependent on this kind of subjectivity, like whether or not a wine is "fruit-forward," or "dry," or "acidic." These kinds of general descriptions probably are more easily verifiable, although I don't know if anyone has done any research on that.

Finally, I'd just caution that subjectivity and rich description are some of the things that make life grand. While everyone has their limit for what they're willing to put up with, talking a little bit about a glass of wine, over a glass of wine, can be a real pleasure, if only in the "I see the King of Siam riding a streetcar down Canal Street" cloud-watching kind of way.
posted by OmieWise at 12:17 PM on November 13, 2009 [2 favorites]

Lots of good answers in here so far. This is interesting reading... thanks!
posted by emelenjr at 12:23 PM on November 13, 2009

Blarg. I wish i could find the excerpt online, but alas I don't think its up; there is a wonderful section in Mlodinow's newish book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives that debunks a lot of myths about wine and wine tasters. Basically, most wine tasters, say, when given a description of the wine cannot pick out the correct wine and vice-versa. When presented with a bottle of white wine and another bottle of white wine with a tasteless, odorless dye in it to make it appear red, wine tasters with a predisposition for red wines consistently favor the "red" wine in this example. When presented with two bottles of wine, one expensive and one cheap - though the price tags have been switched - wine tasters consistently favor the "expensive" (actually the cheap) wine. These are among many more detailed studies regarding the topic that can be found in the book.

Basically, there is a lot more psychological nonsense going on in the world of wine, a lot more bullshit and arbitrary ratings, descriptions, pricing, etc. than most Chateau Lafite lovers would probably care to admit.

I'm not saying that there isn't science behind the creation of flavors - of course there is - in fact viticulture is a rapidly growing field and has spawned many competitive graduate programs in recent years, but the post-production scoring, rating, critiquing and pricing is largely the result of stochastic opinions and inflated egos.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:35 PM on November 13, 2009 [5 favorites]

Petentiousology? I'll always recall Dave Barry talking about "nuances of toast":

Yes! Nuances of toast! I bet they exchanged high fives in the Pretentious Phrase Room when they came up with that one!

Also seconding everything Lutoslawski said.
posted by ostranenie at 1:52 PM on November 13, 2009

This article goes into the the taste of blackcurrants, "the most common flavor descriptor of the most popular grape variety in the world: Cabernet Sauvignon."

...blackcurrant aromas can be perceived in sulfur compounds in wine that are often considered faults. These volatile sulfur compounds can be pleasant at lower levels (tropical fruit, gooseberry, blackcurrant) but awful at high levels (cat’s pee, burnt rubber, rotten cabbage). This seems to make sense as it’s not difficult to imagine the funky and gamey qualities of blackcurrant morphing into something foul. Perhaps this dark, potentially dangerous (and smelly) side is what makes blackcurrant so attractive.

posted by Iridic at 2:33 PM on November 13, 2009

As an anecdote on the 'subjective' side of things, a friend who worked in a bar would have a great time imagining all sorts of things to tell customers who were tasting wines. This one has aromas of Victorian bushland, this one has a subtle hint of bamboo stalk, this one has a fine note of laundered sheets, etc. And, more often than not, people would agree with him. Perhaps because they simply wanted to appear clever, but I think it's more likely that once you are looking for a particular flavour it becomes much easier to find it.

Also, what wine experts call blackcurrant or oak or smoke may differ from what you call them. If you ever have access to a set of wine tasting scent vial things (little bottles of pure scent), try one without reading it and have other people do so as well. Between my friends and I, one scent was called forest floor, or wet grass, or soil, or peat, or bark chips. We were all smelling the same thing, but the 'proper' term for that scent was, if I remember correctly, soil. So you may be tasting the same thing as someone else, even if you give it a different name.
posted by twirlypen at 3:39 PM on November 13, 2009

I have a Nez du Vin kit.

One thing I learned is that the ability to recognize smells varies widely from person to person. You might think that anybody can recognize, say, green pepper but its not true. Many people will say "Darn! I know this smell! I know it! I just cant say what it is!" its an interesting phenomenon.

Anyways, this is to say that yes wines have flavor notes, but we all differ in our ability to recognize and identify them. Even in Nez du Vin, where a definite smell is there, people will hesitate to identify it. I imagine thats more true within the more complex aroma of wine. Most people probably go with the flow so as to not look dumb. But thats not the same as saying there is not an actual flavor there.
posted by vacapinta at 2:49 AM on November 14, 2009

Alright, so I'm late to the thread, but I am a wine steward, and thought I should comment. People pay me, sometimes surprisingly large amounts and sometimes ego-crushingly small amounts of money, to tell them what I think of wines. My colleagues and I (especially us youngsters) try very hard to have our opinions actually mean something, rather than just being pretentious.

So a few good notes above. When we say, for example, that a wine has a 'barnyard' characteristic, it's not a direct reference. Rather, we're using it as a shorthand for several different but related taste and smell sensations, and individual interpretations of that are presumed to be a little variant. Interestingly, terms like sweaty saddle, pencil eraser, lime twig, almond skin, or shit (frequently heard with peers, never said in front of customers), are relatively modern simplifications. In bygone years, wine professionals largely compared their products to previous vintages, zones, and labels. A buyer, for example, would declare a wine to be 'Pleasantly reminiscent of the '34 Margaux, with a touch of the south to it, but too close to the right bank for me.' This of course presumes that everyone in the industry is highly familiar with French wine, and more or less locks out consumers. The modern vocabulary developed as a sort of international language of wine; in theory, someone of my abilities, expertise, and experience, tasting the same wine that I am, will come up with very similar tasting notes.

The aroma kits are absolutely essential in this regard to people looking to get into the industry: they are the dictionaries for our vocabularies.

Once you've been trained/trained yourself towards objectivity (we, or at least my tasting groups, are fetishistic about developing clean, empirical methods), taste is much less subjective than you'd think. After all, the molecules are there in the wine (this is objective), they interact with the chemical apparatus of your taste buds in certain predictable ways, which gets filtered through your olfactory centers and finally your experiences, which is really the only subjective part of the whole process. Virtually everything in wine has some impact on flavor: phenols, polyphenols, esters, alcohols, acids, proteins, you name it, it has a taste.

My personal philosophy, incidentally, is pretty dismissive of objectivity in wine outside of academia. After all, preference is the most important factor in a wine, and no amount of science will change that. Tasting genetics vary from person to person. Food, environment, temperature, attitude, mental state, etc. all change both the chemistry of the wine and the appreciation of it. A great wine is always great, but a good wine may be lovely to mediocre from moment to moment. For all of these reasons, I've noticed a large shift away from pretension in stewards and sommes my age; we just don't take ourselves as seriously. We get paid to drink, and to babble on about it. It's a great gig.
posted by gam zeh yaavor at 10:40 PM on November 19, 2009