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Do you find salt in a wine pleasing or a flaw ?


Don Giovanni

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Do you find salt in a wine pleasing or a flaw ?

Salts in wine...disclosure I have interest in North Fork Long Island Vineyards and sometimes the salt I get from my fruit is very enjoyable...It is this salt that comes from the sea and is very natural...if someone was to taste some salt would you call it a flaw...then if you knew it came from a maritime influence would you change your opinion and call it a part of terroir as it should be...now the other salts that you can taste can come from wines treated with calcium sulfate...these wines are plastered...why because the are from must treatments...last if a wine is over treated with sodium-ion-exchangers they will taste of salt...source page 77...Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation...Amerine and Roessler out of print UCD...1975...

So for me the bit of the sea salt reminds me of that sense of place...this I find when supple creates a great distinct wine...if not from the sea then to me it's a flaw...your comments please...

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It reminds me of those sheep that graze on the salt marsh in Brittany. I have never tasted it (the lamb), but I would like to experience it! I wouln't say it is a flaw, but then, I'm a bit of a "Black Sheep" myself. I would enjoy working with the wine to see how it reacts with food. I think that most people would just taste it, thumb their nose at it, and move on. These individuals are usually not very "food" savvy wine drinkers. I have found alot of excellent food wines that are very underappreciated by the "Wine Snobs." They judge a wine most times on its own, without any food. These kind of "wine experts" drive me nuts.

Edited by Stevarino (log)
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John,

I find "saltiness" (as a descriptor for intense minerality) an interesting component of both red and white wine and acceptable if in balance with the fruit and other elements of taste.

But if you are speaking of "salt," as if I shook a salt shaker over my wine, then I'd vote flaw.

Best, Jim

www.CowanCellars.com

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John,

I find "saltiness" (as a descriptor for intense minerality) an interesting component of both red and white wine and acceptable if in balance with the fruit and other elements of taste.

But if you are speaking of "salt," as if I shook a salt shaker over my wine, then I'd vote flaw.

Best, Jim

Jim,

I have find salt both as a descriptor and as in it tastes like someone took some salt to the wine...I find it pleasing to a point...it must come from a maritime influence... leaving the wine balanced...

Cheers !

john

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Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation...Amerine and Roessler out of print UCD...1975...

There may be a reason this book is out of print. That reason may be 30+ years of new research. Wine science has come a very, very long way in the last 30 years.

Edited by Craig Camp (log)
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Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation...Amerine and Roessler out of print UCD...1975...

There may be a reason this book is out of print. That reason may be 30+ years of new research. Wine science has come a very, very long way in the last 30 years.

Not as far as you think as far as Sensory Evaluation...wine has been around for how long...Plato, Aristotle, Socrates , Pliny the elder, Pliny the younger...do you discard the works of such men...was it not in the first century AD Pliny the Elder lamented that "not even our nobility ever enjoys wines that are genuine" on counterfeiting timeless and priceless...30 years of new research...by whom...from where...please tender the knowledge...we are all ears...wanting to be educated...we all have an open mind...show me the new facts...the ones that refute what was posted...or then if not...your comment is moot...

Cheers !

more info...edit:Use a time perspective of wine and history... this book just came out a few seconds ago...if we use an age clock...now the new studies that I have seen are not even close to this book...why...because there just has been a bunch of static in the wine business...people writing books...lets talk about legs...not one has improved on the science of the "Marangoni effects" that explain this phenomenon...be careful not to through the first stone...always respect the past...never think you are above the facts...so I call you out ...show me new proven influential studies that refute the post...I am all ears...it is with much respect that I learn from people of the past...again... your point is moot...

Edited by Don Giovanni (log)
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Plato thought there were only four elements in the world, fire, water, air, and earth. As good as he was in his day, science has moved a bit beyond him. This certainly does not mean that he should not be studied or revered.

You ask who? How about 30 years of research by scientists in Geisenheim, Bordeaux, Davis, Fresno and other great wine research institutions. There is also the fact that, because of this research, no one that is making great wine is making wine or growing wine they way they did 30 years ago because of that research. The advances in viticulture alone have revolutionized the world of wine.

Moot this argument is, because anyone who tasted wines made thirty years ago, when they were young, and who has tasted today's wines knows there are huge differences.

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I would love it if these generalization about wine would provide some specifics or some evidence. What wine or wines are we talking about as being "salty"?

Some Wines can have a certain "salinity" to them--at least as we perceive it. It's all about chemicals which are what wine is composed of and taste buds.

Also, the notion of terroir has been so overblown as to promote some very silly notions. I guess we can place salt into the hopper with the vaunted "minerality."

It appears that terroir is about climate and ripening rather than dirt--the dirt part is really about drainage and heat retention or dissipation.

I have no idea where the salt part comes from. I guess it is the sea--is anyone producing wines grown from hydroponically grown vines using sea water?

I tend to agree with Jim. On the perception part. Salinity can be a pleasant aspect in a wine unless it becomes too prevalent at which point it would be rather off putting.

The "tanginess" certain wines can possess can be quite pleasant ands interesting--where it comes from and why is another matter.

Edited by JohnL (log)
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Actually, it is supposed to be a point of distinction between Fino and Manzanilla.

I agree that fino's can also have a sort of "salty" quality.

So do many wines from the Jura.

Given the Jura is up in the mountains far from the sea.....

Oddly (or not so oddly) the wines from the Jura are often made in a very oxidative style (some are even the result of a flor forming in the barrels),I would suggest that the salinity we are talking about may very well be attributed to something other than a specific place --the sea (then again maybe not).

Peynaud in "The Taste of Wine" identifies sixteen chemicals present in wine that can affect saltiness.

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In regards to Manzanilla, that "salt" characteristic, I understand that it is a result of "micro-climate", and the flora, which is a particular yeast that forms on the surface of the wine as it ages, and only exists in close proximity to the sea, that gives it uniqueness. Perhaps Don Giovanni has a similar thing going on?

All the science of winemaking is nice, but what is being left to individualism? In the end, you end up with pasteurized American cheese. I know, its all subjective.

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I don't mind a sea salt quality in some whites and in sherry. And I've detected it in several coastal whites, particular from Italy and Spain. Usually it's a secondary or tertiary element, though. I don't want anything (salt or whatever) to be a distracting force.

We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink - Cicero

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I don't mind a little "saltiness" in a red wine, especially when drinking it with food. Some wines that stand out in my memory in this regard are some Mexican wines from a region in Baja whose name eludes me at the moment. They weren't "salty" though they tasted of salt. I enjoyed them.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

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I have no idea where the salt part comes from. I guess it is the sea--is anyone producing wines grown from hydroponically grown vines using sea water?

Many wines arriving from Chile in the Mid- eighties towards the early nineties had an air of saltiness to them. The "old style" Chilean rustic winemaking had a distinctive dried sea-salt aromas that had clinged to many of the wines that I had tasted.

Irrigation with Sea-Water had been experimented with in the Southern Negev of Israel. Vines had been successfully cultivated using salty water with very low yield and high sugar concentration and color results . Over time this could prove problematic with higher salt contents in the ground though NO3 was used as a partial solution.

Wine had been made from the grapes of these vines with fairly poor results. Alcoholic wines that lack fruit concentration and balance.

Andre Suidan

I was taught to finish what I order.

Life taught me to order what I enjoy.

The art of living taught me to take my time and enjoy.

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