Honey and chocolate

Last weekend I tasted wines that had chocolate notes.  What’s unusual about that?  Well, these wines were Mosel Rieslings.  Even then maybe it is not so unusual – I don’t really know – but it was a first for me.  I was scratching around for descriptors for a mature example of one of these wines, and someone mentioned chocolate.  Yes, that was it, or it may possibly have been coffee.  It was a bitter dark chocolate, not the sort that Anne Noble has in the caramel section of her aroma wheel.  Then a few minutes later I subsequently found chocolate on another Mosel Riesling.   For the record, the wines were 1988 Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Riesling Spätlese and 1985 Braunerberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Auslese.

By now you may have guessed that a honey aroma were found on an equally implausible wine.  In this case it was a red wine, and the aroma was a lot clearer to me.  It was something distinctive that I recognised, but I could not put my finger on.  I was thinking out loud – caramel, golden syrup, but no, that was not it.  Finally someone else said honey, and yes that was precisely it.  The wine was Beaucastel 1999, and tasted back in 2006.  I had to check my notes to get the vintage and the date of tasting, but I remember the experience well.

I know I am far from alone in seeking out the aromas I expect in various wines, and then finding them.  Usually these are subsets of the list of those supposed typically to be present, while other so-called typical aromas often elude me completely.  Thus, I tend to find lime and petrol in Riesling, gooseberry in Sauvignon Blanc, blackcurrant in Cabernet Sauvignon, violets and tar in Barolo, and Pinot Noir usually tastes mainly like Pinot Noir to me and I don’t even bother trying to find taste-a-likey fruits.  I try to explore the possibility of other aromas, but usually finish up concluding that no, that Riesling does not taste of lemon, it is definitely lime.  Boring maybe, but a reality for me.

I don’t think there is any point of stretching ones imagination to the point of possibly inventing aromas that are not present, but the moral for me is that maybe I need to cast my net a lot wider to latch onto the unexpected aromas that do really exist in wine.

Update 26/10/11:  I have just read in Jamie Goode’s “Authentic Wine” that honey aromas could result from the brett product 2-phenylethanol, so maybe it is not so surprising to find it in Brettcastel after all.

Author: Steve Slatcher

Wine enthusiast

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *