"Smoky wines" - terroir vs. winemaking

larry_schaffer · July 9, 2021, 7:22pm

Cause and effect is winemaking is a crap shoot at best - I wish both consumers and winemakers realized that

Is it possible to get that ‘struck match’ in chardonnay anywhere in the world? It appears so - but never in an identical and consistent manner because of the inherent differences with Vineyard sites, winemaking sites, winemaker ‘intent’, etc . . .

LasseK1 · July 9, 2021, 7:32pm

Ofcause not. And then we come back to the good old discussion of terrior. But for me then the reductive matchstick note is just one of the notes that is most telling for a certain technique.

I love it, i search for it and i have found it from Burgundy, to Chateneauf-du-pape, Tenerife, Alsace and Jura. It is one of the few notes that i expect based on reading about how a wine is made.

William_Kelley · July 9, 2021, 7:46pm

Personally, I don’t like the use of “struck match” to denote a reductive white winemaking style or the presence of sulfides. If you actually strike a match, the principal thing that you are smelling is sulfur burning, i.e. nose-prickling sulfur dioxide. And when I use “struck match” in a tasting note, it’s to indicate that the wine hasn’t yet digested its pre-bottling sulfur dioxide addition. This can occur in reductive-styled white wines, but also in white wines that are not made in a reductive style.

Incidentally, the English word “match” comes from the French mèche. Historically, wine was preserved by burning sulfur wicks, aka matches, in empty barrels before racking wine into them. The French still use the word today for burning sulfur in an empty barrel. So I think there is some long-term coherence for using “struck match” or “matchstick” in a tasting note to denote quite high levels of SO2 in a more relatable, non-technical way.

larry_schaffer · July 9, 2021, 7:59pm

As with everything else wine related, so much comes down to interpretation - as you said, one person’s struck match is another’s ‘too much SO2’. Unless we are sitting side by side with the same wine, there is no way to know that we are talking about the same thing . . .

Cheers

Wes_Barton · July 9, 2021, 8:04pm

What a lot of these producers are doing is barrel aging to get what they want out of the wine, then putting it in stainless for, say, 3 to 6 months to “firm up” and become a bit reductive.

David_Bu3ker · July 9, 2021, 8:07pm

OK. Which producers and which wines. Way too general.

Marshall_Manning · July 9, 2021, 8:51pm

How the oak shows on a wine can definitely be a matter of vineyard. I’ve tasted wines with high amounts of new wood that barely showed it. I’ve also tasted wines with low amounts that show a lot. Plus, there are likely other factors in the winemaking process that can allow wood to show more than other wines with different techniques. I think that’s a lot of what the recent thread discussing how the oak shows on Ridge wines was about underneath.

The thing is before RMP was made into the enemy of all good palates out there people didn’t seem to make so much hay over oak levels. It was just part of the deal. Now it’s cool to say any sign of new wood would make you cringe.

Almost all great, classic wines from the lifetimes of members of this board(prior to the great anti-oak campaigns of the last couple decades) likely show some influence of wood upbringing. Because almost all of them saw some amount of time in oak prior to bottling. The great wines likely came from vineyards where that wood was soaked in like spice.

There’s a huge difference between “wood upbringing” and a high level of new oak, which is what most of us who don’t like oak aromas and flavors complain about. Classic Barolo used wood upbringing, but very little new wood for example. And lots of new oak is even a fairly modern (1970s or later) thing for most producers in regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy. To me it has absolutely nothing to do with “cool,” just what someone’s palate likes. I’ve been complaining about too much oak for years…back when Parker was “cool” and lots of people were buying high-point CA Cabs and Aussie Shiraz.

jhowe · July 9, 2021, 9:22pm

This is a very interesting thread for me. Can you guys in the know tell me how to differentiate a wine made with residual sulfur dioxide from one made in a reductive style? I had always assumed there was a correlation but it seems there are some nuances. I know a lot about drinking wine but not much about making it.

William_Kelley · July 9, 2021, 11:26pm

How the oak shows on a wine can definitely be a matter of vineyard. I’ve tasted wines with high amounts of new wood that barely showed it. I’ve also tasted wines with low amounts that show a lot. Plus, there are likely other factors in the winemaking process that can allow wood to show more than other wines with different techniques. I think that’s a lot of what the recent thread discussing how the oak shows on Ridge wines was about underneath.

The thing is before RMP was made into the enemy of all good palates out there people didn’t seem to make so much hay over oak levels. It was just part of the deal. Now it’s cool to say any sign of new wood would make you cringe.

Almost all great, classic wines from the lifetimes of members of this board(prior to the great anti-oak campaigns of the last couple decades) likely show some influence of wood upbringing. Because almost all of them saw some amount of time in oak prior to bottling. The great wines likely came from vineyards where that wood was soaked in like spice.

There’s a huge difference between “wood upbringing” and a high level of new oak, which is what most of us who don’t like oak aromas and flavors complain about. Classic Barolo used wood upbringing, but very little new wood for example. And lots of new oak is even a fairly modern (1970s or later) thing for most producers in regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy. To me it has absolutely nothing to do with “cool,” just what someone’s palate likes. I’ve been complaining about too much oak for years…back when Parker was “cool” and lots of people were buying high-point CA Cabs and Aussie Shiraz.

…and then rewind further, back to when wines were sold in barrel, and new oak was the norm again… A complicated business, this, and there is no one “traditional” era to reach back to, just a long history of evolution.

William_Kelley · July 9, 2021, 11:33pm

Strike a match, or burn some sulfur if you can find some, and cautiously smell the aromas. That is sulfur dioxide. It’s a choking, nostril-prickling, acrid smell in any significant concentration. You will find this true struck match aroma in some young, built-to-age white Burgundies: open a 2018 Coche or Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, for example. In my experience, comparing lab numbers to the wine in the glass, my impression is that you need to be >40 ppm free SO2 to get this sort of obvious effect. Given that sulfur shuts down aromas and flavors, and that most wines are drunk young, few producers do this…

But you could take e.g. a very ripe, oxidative Grenache Blanc-based white Côtes du Rhône and then add a big hit of sulfur, and your wine would have the characteristics of an oxidative élevage combined with the struck match of in-your-face free SO2. You can find wines like this for around 10 EUR in French supermarkets should you wish to.

Cris_Whetstone · July 10, 2021, 1:47am

How the oak shows on a wine can definitely be a matter of vineyard. I’ve tasted wines with high amounts of new wood that barely showed it. I’ve also tasted wines with low amounts that show a lot. Plus, there are likely other factors in the winemaking process that can allow wood to show more than other wines with different techniques. I think that’s a lot of what the recent thread discussing how the oak shows on Ridge wines was about underneath.

The thing is before RMP was made into the enemy of all good palates out there people didn’t seem to make so much hay over oak levels. It was just part of the deal. Now it’s cool to say any sign of new wood would make you cringe.

Almost all great, classic wines from the lifetimes of members of this board(prior to the great anti-oak campaigns of the last couple decades) likely show some influence of wood upbringing. Because almost all of them saw some amount of time in oak prior to bottling. The great wines likely came from vineyards where that wood was soaked in like spice.

There’s a huge difference between “wood upbringing” and a high level of new oak, which is what most of us who don’t like oak aromas and flavors complain about. Classic Barolo used wood upbringing, but very little new wood for example. And lots of new oak is even a fairly modern (1970s or later) thing for most producers in regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy. To me it has absolutely nothing to do with “cool,” just what someone’s palate likes. I’ve been complaining about too much oak for years…back when Parker was “cool” and lots of people were buying high-point CA Cabs and Aussie Shiraz.

All wood was new at some point. How do you think it became used?

David_Bu3ker · July 10, 2021, 1:56am

How the oak shows on a wine can definitely be a matter of vineyard. I’ve tasted wines with high amounts of new wood that barely showed it. I’ve also tasted wines with low amounts that show a lot. Plus, there are likely other factors in the winemaking process that can allow wood to show more than other wines with different techniques. I think that’s a lot of what the recent thread discussing how the oak shows on Ridge wines was about underneath.

The thing is before RMP was made into the enemy of all good palates out there people didn’t seem to make so much hay over oak levels. It was just part of the deal. Now it’s cool to say any sign of new wood would make you cringe.

Almost all great, classic wines from the lifetimes of members of this board(prior to the great anti-oak campaigns of the last couple decades) likely show some influence of wood upbringing. Because almost all of them saw some amount of time in oak prior to bottling. The great wines likely came from vineyards where that wood was soaked in like spice.

There’s a huge difference between “wood upbringing” and a high level of new oak, which is what most of us who don’t like oak aromas and flavors complain about. Classic Barolo used wood upbringing, but very little new wood for example. And lots of new oak is even a fairly modern (1970s or later) thing for most producers in regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy. To me it has absolutely nothing to do with “cool,” just what someone’s palate likes. I’ve been complaining about too much oak for years…back when Parker was “cool” and lots of people were buying high-point CA Cabs and Aussie Shiraz.

All wood was new at some point. How do you think it became used?

There’s no AFWE Wood Nymphs?

Alan_Rath · July 10, 2021, 3:09am

This is a very interesting thread for me. Can you guys in the know tell me how to differentiate a wine made with residual sulfur dioxide from one made in a reductive style? I had always assumed there was a correlation but it seems there are some nuances. I know a lot about drinking wine but not much about making it.

Strike a match, or burn some sulfur if you can find some, and cautiously smell the aromas. That is sulfur dioxide. It’s a choking, nostril-prickling, acrid smell in any significant concentration. You will find this true struck match aroma in some young, built-to-age white Burgundies: open a 2018 Coche or Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, for example. In my experience, comparing lab numbers to the wine in the glass, my impression is that you need to be >40 ppm free SO2 to get this sort of obvious effect. Given that sulfur shuts down aromas and flavors, and that most wines are drunk young, few producers do this…

But you could take e.g. a very ripe, oxidative Grenache Blanc-based white Côtes du Rhône and then add a big hit of sulfur, and your wine would have the characteristics of an oxidative élevage combined with the struck match of in-your-face free SO2. You can find wines like this for around 10 EUR in French supermarkets should you wish to.

I ran a poll on this a couple of years ago. As usual, when it comes to actual chemistry, it wasn’t clear that most people actually understand what they are trying to describe. As a chemist, I confess I still don’t either, when it comes to the “struck match” descriptor. I’ve smelled plenty of bottles that are described with struck match, and plenty of struck matches, lol, as well as plenty of wines with the strongly obvious sensation of SO2 (which for me often masks any actual aroma). I still can’t correlate any of those smells or sensations with what I think people are describing with “struck match”. If it is indeed predominantly just an over abundance of SO2, then just call it that: SO2. But I personally don’t think that’s what most people are trying to describe.

LasseK1 · July 10, 2021, 5:09am

William is probably better at explaining the difference. But I had very reductive notes lately in a few Jura’s, which were all made without any added SO2. So I guess they are fun for the learning experience if you want to experiment (Francois Rousset-Martin’s 2018 La Chaux is one)

Here is an article about the subject:

William_Kelley · July 10, 2021, 11:33am

Good points in your post, and honestly, I suspect that not so many consumers even strike matches on a regular basis these days, so this has even become a bit of an abstraction.

I’m not sure I would call it an “over abundance” of SO2, because it works out pretty well for twenty year old Coche for example. As for calling it SO2 explicitly, I worry that this will be even less relatable for an ordinary consumer than talking about struck matches. For the same reason that we say a wine “smells like cloves” rather than saying it “smells of eugenol”, and why we talk about cracked pepper and not rotundone. A tasting note is a description, not an analysis, after all.

David_Bu3ker · July 10, 2021, 12:45pm

This is a very interesting thread for me. Can you guys in the know tell me how to differentiate a wine made with residual sulfur dioxide from one made in a reductive style? I had always assumed there was a correlation but it seems there are some nuances. I know a lot about drinking wine but not much about making it.

Strike a match, or burn some sulfur if you can find some, and cautiously smell the aromas. That is sulfur dioxide. It’s a choking, nostril-prickling, acrid smell in any significant concentration. You will find this true struck match aroma in some young, built-to-age white Burgundies: open a 2018 Coche or Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, for example. In my experience, comparing lab numbers to the wine in the glass, my impression is that you need to be >40 ppm free SO2 to get this sort of obvious effect. Given that sulfur shuts down aromas and flavors, and that most wines are drunk young, few producers do this…

But you could take e.g. a very ripe, oxidative Grenache Blanc-based white Côtes du Rhône and then add a big hit of sulfur, and your wine would have the characteristics of an oxidative élevage combined with the struck match of in-your-face free SO2. You can find wines like this for around 10 EUR in French supermarkets should you wish to.

I ran a poll on this a couple of years ago. As usual, when it comes to actual chemistry, it wasn’t clear that most people actually understand what they are trying to describe. As a chemist, I confess I still don’t either, when it comes to the “struck match” descriptor. I’ve smelled plenty of bottles that are described with struck match, and plenty of struck matches, lol, as well as plenty of wines with the strongly obvious sensation of SO2 (which for me often masks any actual aroma). I still can’t correlate any of those smells or sensations with what I think people are describing with “struck match”. If it is indeed predominantly just an over abundance of SO2, then just call it that: SO2. But I personally don’t think that’s what most people are trying to describe.

Poll: what do you mean when you write "struck match" as a descriptor? - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers

This is the problem with aroma perception. We’re not all trained chemists. My training is in physics, and then aerospace engineering, so clearly I have zero idea what I am talking about.

That was mostly in jest, but getting hung up on the precise chemical compound pretty much strips the joy out of wine. If we need to satisfy a scientific standard to describe wine then shut down all wine discussion, amateur or professional. The struck match discussion isn’t the only one (see all the petrol in Riesling debates), and they will continue as long as people talk about wine.

Setting the bar at scientific accuracy just further “snobbifies” (sorry) wine.

Adam_Frisch · July 10, 2021, 1:09pm

It is standard procedure to sulfur neutral barrels to preserve them between fills. When you don’t rinse them thoroughly or on first fill, they can easily pick up a matchstick note. It goes away with racking or time.

Kirk.Grant · July 10, 2021, 1:48pm

Is it possible to get that ‘struck match’ in chardonnay anywhere in the world? It appears so - but never in an identical and consistent manner because of the inherent differences with Vineyard sites, winemaking sites, winemaker ‘intent’, etc . . .

Personally, I don’t like the use of “struck match” to denote a reductive white winemaking style or the presence of sulfides. If you actually strike a match, the principal thing that you are smelling is sulfur burning, i.e. nose-prickling sulfur dioxide. And when I use “struck match” in a tasting note, it’s to indicate that the wine hasn’t yet digested its pre-bottling sulfur dioxide addition. This can occur in reductive-styled white wines, but also in white wines that are not made in a reductive style.

Incidentally, the English word “match” comes from the French mèche. Historically, wine was preserved by burning sulfur wicks, aka matches, in empty barrels before racking wine into them. The French still use the word today for burning sulfur in an empty barrel. So I think there is some long-term coherence for using “struck match” or “matchstick” in a tasting note to denote quite high levels of SO2 in a more relatable, non-technical way.

I’m very curious about this conversation as I do tend to like the reductive smell that I associate with “struck match” or “matchstick” as others here have noted. I really appreciate William taking his time to comment here and I’m hoping that Marcus will comment as well. Seeing that all the Chardonnays that I have bought from him, seem to have varying degrees of that note. I’m also wondering is this something that reduces or goes away with age? Because if so, then I want to be consuming those wines in their youth.

Marshall_Manning · July 10, 2021, 6:54pm

I’m not sure if you’re being facetious here, but many of the world’s best producers rotate their barrels, either in a particular fixed cycle or just as they are needed. This gives a small amount of new oak usage every year without it becoming a dominant aroma/flavor component. There are also producers who only buy used barrels as they don’t want any new oak influence at all.

Marshall_Manning · July 10, 2021, 6:58pm

Interesting, William. Was this just the case in Bordeaux? I can’t imagine this being the case in Germany, Piedmont, the Loire, or myriad other smaller regions that have a long tradition of winemaking but have long used larger vessels. It seems like those would be difficult to sell, but even more difficult to move .