Funny how things happen. Until the 1990s, the term minerality didn’t appear in the most acclaimed guides, not even the Oxford Companion to Wine. For wine lovers all over the world, flavors were basically fruity, floral, spicy, herbal…
Then, suddenly, this new word - minerality - emerged to become the trendiest descriptor in the wine lover’s lexicon. Googling it produces more than a million results. The term itself is relatively new: according to a study examining the word’s evolution in French literature, associations between minéralité (minerality) and vin (wine) have increased since 1985. Yet, despite this recent explosion of popularity, a unique definition has not been created.
“Think of the taste of the sea, like oysters,” was one writer’s description. “It’s like chalk, or flint,” suggested another. Or, the smell of the ground after a rain… No, wait a minute, that has already a name – petrichor – although almost nobody knows or uses it. For most people, minerality in a wine means aromatic characteristics such as wet stone, graphite, smoke, sometimes even hydrocarbon. Others associate the word with acidity or saltiness in wine. And there are still others who argue it relates to the soil where the grapes were grown.
“Soil contains minerals (potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, etc.), and some people think they could be transferred to wine during winemaking,” says Marco Li Calzi, enology professor at Ecole d’Ingenieurs de Purpan (France). “However, opinions differ about the ability of grapes to absorb these minerals from the soil and especially about the resulting sensory impact.”
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