Not sure you want a wine that tastes like smoked meat? You might be surprised. Let us explain the strangest words in wine.
If wine is made from fermented grapes, then why do all these weird wine descriptions exist? Things like leather, forest floor, slate and *checks notes* newly opened tennis balls… It may seem like a bit of flowery wank, packaged up by hoity-toity sommeliers and the like, but in reality, these out-there notes can help you taste and appreciate the wine more. But how much of it is actual fact and how much is embellished for the sake of prose? Depends.
Wine writers love a little poetic hyperbole. For example, Hugh Johnson writes in his book Wine: A Life Uncorked: “I have tasted first-attempt chardonnays that were like Dizzy Gillespie’s solos: all over the place. And the colour of his trumpet, too.” While that’s not giving too much away about the actual taste, there is an implied texture (if you know what Dizzy Gillespie sounds like). If we whittle away the metaphors and similes, we’re left with flavours, textures and aromas.
Taste and smell, unlike our other senses, are much trickier to pin down. The act of wine tasting, picking out very particular flavours (even selecting regions, years and grapes) takes a lot of practice and guidance. This is probably why wine tastings are run communally, to help people identify and understand what they’re tasting. Various wine wheels and graphs have been annotated to group these flavours – Dr Ann Noble’s wine aroma from the ’80s being the most famous, using “fruity”, “woody” and more to group notes.
These sorts of terms in wine can mean a few different things. Describing a wine as meaty could mean it's a very full-bodied wine, used to describe the mouthfeel and texture. Or it could quite literally be describing the taste. Smoked meat and grilled meat flavours have all been used to describe wines – most often in things like shiraz and mencia.
Gamey descriptors, things like venison, fowl and even jerky, usually indicate there is a bit of age to the wine and are most apparent in older pinot noirs or reds from the Rhône.
If we’re calling a wine ‘meaty’ because of its big, round, full-bodied and almost creamy texture, then the wine usually has some pretty hefty tannins or a higher ABV (alcohol content). These are particularly present in shiraz, mourvèdre, malbec, and some cabernets and merlots. Watch out for sharp metallic or tinny metal aromas in your wine – this could be a brettanomyces fault, which some even say resembles the smell of Band-Aids.
