WINE VOCABULARY, STEP BY STEP - 15

THIS WILL BE YOUR SECRET MANUAL TO

Affordable styles, self-development, how-to do’s, learn to divine and describe your own taste. Wine is a personal preference; everybody taste different and likes or dislikes some smell or taste impressions.

FOR THE SELF-MADE PERSON

My impression is that a lot of wine critics sound like a doctor. Using wine terms if everybody knows them. To understand this better, I will take you, in the coming time, step by step through those words in a normal way.

By AD Wines, Dannis Apeldoorn

From A to Z —> F

Flavour

All the things you taste like sweet - sour - zout en bitter. This you can split up in 3 categories; primary, secondary, and tertiary flavour.

Primary flavours

Primary flavours are the flavours of the grape and alcoholic fermentation. The questions you have to ask yourself are. 

• are they delicate or intense?

• simple or complex?

• generic or well-defined?

• fresh or cooked?

• under ripe or ripe or over-ripe?

Primary flavours are divided into clusters to make it more easy.

• floral

• green fruit

• citrus fruit

• stone fruit

• tropical fruit

• red fruit

• black fruit

• dried/cooked fruit

• herbaceous

• herbal

• spices

• other

Secondary flavours has to do with the flavours of the post-fermentation winemaking.

You ask yourself, where are the flavours coming from; yeast, or malolactic conversion, or oak?

Also the secondary flavours are build up in clusters with the descriptors.

• yeast, then you get flavours of biscuit, bread, toast, pastry, brioche, bread dough and/or cheese.

• Malolactic conversion, then you get flavours like butter, cheese and/or cream.

• Oak, then you get the flavours of vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, coconut, butterscotch, toast, cedar, charred wood, smoke, chocolate, coffee and/or resinous.

The tertiary flavours has to do with maturation.

You need to ask yourself the questions, how do the flavours show; deliberate oxidation, fruit development or had it bottle age?

Here also the tertiary flavours are build up from clusters.

• Deliberate oxidation, then you can find one or a few of the following flavours. Almond, marzipan, hazelnut, walnut, chocolate, coffee, toffee and/or caramel.

• Fruit development (white). Dried apricot, marmelade, dried apple, dried banana.

• Fruit development (red). Fig, prune, tar, dried blackberry, dried cranberry or cooked blackberry, cooked red plum.

• Bottle age (white). Petrol, kerosene, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, toast, nutty, mushroom, hay and/or honey.

• Bottle age (red). Leather, forest floor, earth, mushroom, game, tobacco, vegetal, wet leaves, savoury, meaty and/or farmyard.

Grape

Flowers are the vine’s reproductive organs. a vine’s flower have both male and female parts, and are grouped in bunches and are called inflorescences. Each flower that is successfully pollinated will become a berry and so the inflorescence will become the bunch of grapes that will be harvested at the end of the growing season.

The parts of the grape

The grape is build up out of the following parts.

• Seeds and stems (give tannin)

• skin (give colour and contain the natural yeast)

• pulp (largest component of the grape, contains water, sugar, acids)

Grapes can come from two vine species

• Vitis Vinifera (vines to make most of the wine)

• American Vines (most used for their resistant rootstocks for certain pests and diseases).

Grape varieties.

There are thousands of grape varieties belonging to the Vitis Vinifera species. The principal differences between grape varieties are variation in colour and flavour, both properties coming from the grape itself. Differences between varieties are not just limited to the taste and quality of fruit.

The following week we continue with the letter - G.

Next week, same day, Saturday, and same time, 9:30 am CET, the next two words.