Minerality

The taste of wet stone and a world much older than you will ever be

Fortepan / Bauer Sándor

It’s not your electric car, not your fancy friends from the art world, and certainly not how much you make. It’s just one simple sentence. Learn it. Drop it. And you’ll be fine.

„Oh, it tastes so mineral!“

There we go. You’ve just discovered the most potent differentiator in the social signaling market. If you don’t know what our magic phrase refers to, it’s wine. Ask for a pour with „minerality,“ and you will pass as a highly sophisticated connoisseur. No awkward chewing, let alone abusive drinking, is required. If you prefer other intoxicants or none at all, stay tuned nonetheless. Trust me, it’s not just wine lovers to whom the M-word matters.

You won't find it in conventional dictionaries or even in wine literature before the late 1980s. But that doesn’t stop winemakers, sommeliers, and merchants from loving the M-word. It signals a superior product, something highly desirable, which is all the more curious since many drinkers who order a glass of „mineral“ wine secretly find it to be unpleasant, bitter, sour, and far too acidic.

So why has the M-word become so popular? Minerals are seen as an expression of the wine’s origin, its „terroir.” The French term evokes a sense of place, images of wet stones, crushed rock, saline soils, pebbles, and fossils—a pre-industrial landscape cultivated by artisan winemakers.

The story goes like this: dissolved minerals from the soil and the underlying rocks are sucked up by the vine roots, transmitted into the grapes, and eventually end up in the wine. To taste them is to appreciate local peculiarities, to respect nature, and to literally reconnect with what humans have been alienated from since the dawn of modernity.

Beautiful, isn’t it? There’s just one catch to this enchanting narrative. From a scientific point of view, the signal turns out to be — noise.

Alex Maltman, emeritus professor of geology at Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK, ruined the party. A wine lover and winemaker himself, professor Maltman debunked the romantic (and commercially useful) idea of a direct relationship between minerals in a vineyard and the taste of a wine:

„The minerals in wine are nutrient elements – typically metallic cations – and only distantly related to vineyard geological minerals, which are complex crystalline compounds. The mineral nutrients in wine normally have minuscule concentrations and they lack flavour anyway.“

For several reasons, the bacchanalian buzzword is scientifically untenable. No surprise, then, when Maltman points out that „no way has been found to use these elements to identify regional identity and combat wine fraud.“ Worse, higher concentrations of minerals in wine are usually „due to contamination from winery plumbing, traffic pollution or agrochemicals“ – not exactly signs of an idyllic terroir.

Now what? Discard science, as some in the so-called „natural wine“ scene are inclined to? Drop the notion of minerality (or even terroir) because it seems to be nothing more than myth, marketing, and snobbery. Celebrate the reinforced prejudice that folks who call a liquid „dry“ can’t be taken seriously, anyway?

Meanwhile, back on planet wine, something else is going on—something that affects not just a particular beverage but our everyday lives. The quest for minerality, it turns out, is a quest in several sediments. Social signaling and scientific refutation are just the top layers. Grab your backpack and dig below the surface.

Hedonic hypotheses

While some people in the wine world claim to taste the virtually tasteless, others know very well what they are talking about. Experts with exceptional expertise, rigorously trained to analyze wines, blindly recognize regions, villages and vineyards, years, grape varieties, and technical faults.

Believe it or not, there are universities dedicated to the study and research of wine and master’s degrees that few students succeed in obtaining; there even was a Professor of Champagne Management at the Reims Management School, France, a chair that I personally consider to be the most enviable position on the planet.

One of the most respected Masters of Wine is Jancis Robinson, author of the Oxford Companion to Wine. Here’s her take on minerality post Maltman:

„And yet, and yet. Those of us who taste thousands of wines a year find inescapable the fact that wines from different places taste different in what seem like predictable ways. And many of us with tasting experience can see relationships between wine character and vineyard soil types. (...) So something seems to be going on, even if for the moment it cannot fully be explained scientifically.“

Limestone, schist, granite: We’re talking about professionals who consistently identify different soils in blind tastings, the gold standard of tastings, sort of the randomized controlled trials of drinking. Somehow, it seems, (some) soils affect the flavor of a wine and can be sensed, an idea embraced not only by professional tasters but also by many of the world’s best winemakers.

While the linear, direct explanation implied by the M-word doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, the phenomenon, the sensual reality, can’t be ignored, either. Wine writer Terry Theise calls minerality an „unnamable thing that is definitely there but hasn’t yielded to explanation.“ It’s as if tasters are experiencing an aesthetic objection to the hasty retirement of the idea that stones and soils are somehow present in what we drink.

Interestingly, even Maltman himself never disputed the ‚hedonic hypothesis‘ that geological factors influence the taste of a wine. He just claimed that the connection „has to be complex and circuitous“:

„No one thinks that a wine perceived as smelling of, say, tropical fruits or new-mown hay, or tasting of spice or leather has actually involved those materials in its production.“

Hence, when professionals blindly identify a particular soil, many factors are at play. Taste and terroir are intertwined in intricate, indirect ways, including organic compounds and drivers such as „air velocity, UV intensity, spectral wavelength, and bacterial taxa.”

Minerality by metaphor

While scientists continue to explore the complex causality that contributes to what experts now call „perceived minerality,“ it’s important to note that not everything drinkers associate with the M-word necessarily points to a geological origin.

Andrew Jefford, one of the world’s most renowned (and most poetic!) wine writers, welcomed Maltman’s critique as an invitation to „a terminological reset.“ Recalibrating our language, he said, will help us better understand what minerality can actually mean.

When tasters use the M-word, four semantic clusters stand out:

• rock-related associations such as wet or hot rocks, chalk, graphite, flint, gunflint, a struck match, smoke, even earthy notes

• seashore-related perceptions such as salt, iodine, seashells and seaweed

• zesty, citrusy aroma

• metallic sensations.

Many of these comparisons, which are often linked to perceived minerality, are just about well-known wine qualities such as acidity, freshness, or reduction (i.e., winemaking with less oxygen, which can result in sulfur compounds) – qualities that may conjure up images of volcanic landscapes or fresh oysters but have no physical or chemical connection to the vineyard. In fact, minerality is most often, but not exclusively, perceived in relatively dry and rather young white wines. Mineral wines are frequently described as „somewhat neutral, distinctly non-fruity, and highly acidic,“ to quote the knowledgeable blogger Dennis Lapuyade.

The M-word, it turns out, is an umbrella term that encompasses many characteristics that correlate with a heightened sense of minerality. Sometimes, it gets mixed up with other qualities of a wine or associated with attributes of non-geological origin. But there’s another, final layer to uncover that goes beyond minerality by metaphor. For me, it’s the most exciting – and potentially life-changing. That’s because it affects how we enjoy food and beverages, not just when it comes to wine but also in general.

Texture, touch, and the tongue

Aside from the visual appearance of a wine, tasters talk primarily about its aroma, which is perceived by the nose, and its flavor, which is experienced on the palate. However, minerality seems to be perceived primarily through a quality often called „mouthfeel.“ It has long been underestimated, partly because other characteristics of a wine, such as an overt fruitiness or too much alcohol, can mask it. Traditionally, tasting terms like structure, length, body, and the experience of bubbles when drinking champagne all point toward mouthfeel. But there’s more to it than that. Mouthfeel is a special, almost tactile, tasting experience. It’s about texture (e.g., „crisp” or „creamy”) and tension, vibrancy and liveliness. Interestingly, Maltman and some of his colleagues point out that „licking a freshly broken surface of a mineral or rock surface merely gives a tactile sensation“ – a fact that encourages us to rethink minerality as a matter of mouthfeel. The association of minerality with touch, rather than taste, also rejects the substitution of saltiness for minerality, which is in vogue among many wine people today.

Remember Dennis Lapuyade's description of mineral wines as „somewhat neutral, distinctly non-fruity, and highly acidic“? What if we think of minerality as a proxy for a drinking experience that is only possible without ‚louder‘ factors? What if it’s a shorthand for dimensions far more subtle than those addressed by the traditional aroma wheel? Advanced tasters like the Indian-American sommelier-turned-winemaker Rajat Parr and the Chilean terroir consultant Pedro Parra think so. Parra, for example, redefines minerality as „a sort of energy or electricity in the texture of the wine” while Clark Smith, a California-based winemaking consultant, describes it this way:

„In my lexicon, minerality is not an aroma, nor is it a flavor by mouth, though it could be argued to be a taste. It is an energetic buzz in the wine’s finish, almost like an electrical current running through the throat—a nervous raciness similar to acidity, with which it is often confused, but further back in the mouth.“

We know that orthonasal smelling accounts for most of what humans perceive when enjoying a glass of wine, but a reinterpretation of minerality can teach us to also appreciate the fascinating and sometimes delightful experience of retronasal perception, a far too often neglected, quieter aspect of tasting that takes place in the mouth and throat. (In fact, it's frequently skipped over by wine professionals at big tasting events who don't want to get drunk and, therefore, avoid swallowing.)

Of course, the electricity analogy and speculation about the role of acidity or tannins in producing such palpable effects are far from scientific. As hedonic hypotheses, however, they not only inspire further research (including a young discipline called neurogastromomy) but also encourage richer tasting and savoring practices in our daily lives. The search for minerality turns out to be a lesson in humility. It teaches us how little we know, how poorly we use our senses, and how uneducated our palates are. It's a call to taste attentively and cultivate the art of noticing.

Deep time

Now that we have unearthed the social, scientific, and sensual sediments of minerality in wine, one final question remains: Why does the term persist? After its scientific debunking, the M-word's appeal as a status signal is fading. In fact, it has become a bit embarrassing.

Terroir? Sure, the term minerality continues to serve as a placeholder for site-specific aspects of winemaking, including soil, microclimate, and grape variety. Natural conditions are essential to a wine’s terroir, but so are agricultural practices. After years of research, scientists now know that the impression of minerality can be created, at least in part, in the cellar by a skilled winemaker.

To understand the enduring appeal of the M-word and the cultural motive behind its remarkable career, it’s helpful to return to our observation that mineral wines offer a distinct savoring experience. They unfold their full potential quietly, ‚negatively‘ in the sense that many usually appreciated qualities are absent. Minerality, to quote Jancis Robinson, has „nothing to do with anything fruity, vegy, oaky, flowery or spicy.“ It does not evoke harmony, the perfect interplay of all possible gustatory aspects. Instead, in the words of Dennis Lapuyade, it conveys an „extra density that distinguishes, for example, fresh spring water from urban tap water.“

Interestingly, descriptions of great mineral wines tend to be relatively short, as if the silence-like, a-semantic quality of the experience finds its way into the text. With their elements of absence, stillness, and tactility, mineral wines resemble the grandeur of mountains and rocks, the surfaces of stones, the serenity of pebbles. Not surprisingly, some of the finest mineral wines come from regions such as Savoyen in the French Alps.

For me, mineral wines and rocky landscapes share a specific sensibility. Both convey a quiet sovereignty that is strong enough not to need louder means of expression. They feel at peace with the fact that the world is much larger than our tiny lives will ever be. They both come from times unimaginably long ago and can outlive us all.

When everything else is removed, minerality becomes apparent. It is a sensory reminder of the long arc of non-human history. So the next time you‘re tempted to drop the M-word, take a sumptuous sip instead and indulge in the sublime taste of deep time.