Bananas, peaches, strawberries – anything but ‘grapes’. What do all those volatile organic compounds really mean for your summer sipping?
“Strawberries, cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring,” sang Nancy Sinatra. “My summer wine is really made from all these things …” Overlook the angel’s kiss and, if you’re a wine drinker, you might recognise some of those fruity tasting notes – strawberries and cherries, indeed, but also citrus, orchard, other stone fruits and the whole berry family. In fact, it’s common to liken a wine to almost any fruit – except grapes.
A wine can have notes of almost anything – pencil shavings, tennis balls, cat pee – but fruit is the most obvious (clearly, wine is made from fruit) and universally recognised. If I told you I was getting, say, green apple and lime zest from a riesling, you would probably have a good sense of what that meant, and what you might be able to expect on tasting it yourself. If I described a petroleum aroma, that might sound a bit cryptic and much less appealing, unless you were familiar with this tasting note commonly found in riesling. In other words, a wine’s fruit profile is often leveraged as a marketing tool. What better example of this than the “strawberries and cream” of Provence rosé? It’s a tasting note that underpins our collective sense that rosé is a summer drop, perfect for sun-drenched days filled with watching tennis, ocean views and seasonal produce.
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