Minerality?

My Noodle, what an amazing mixture of blindingly obvious cold fact and utter bullshit.

But as always, he carries it off with panache.
 
Once he began to talk chemistry, I became incapable of separating cold fact from bs.

I use the word when I detect "minerally" flavors like slate, granite, chalk, generic wet stone, maybe schist or flint, to which there is (sometimes) an attached sensation of raciness (closer to Clark's definitions 1 and 2, which seemed quite similar), most often found in dry whites. But when I commented on the acidity of a Courtois wine, he corrected me and said that it was actually low, and that minerality was responsible for the sensation. So he, at least, must mean something closer to definition #3.
 
I didn't find it nearly as difficult (except as Oswaldo says, the chemistry) as others here seem to.
If there be pure bs, could someone point it out to me?
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Florida Jim: I didn't find it nearly as difficult (except as Oswaldo says, the chemistry) as others here seem to.
If there be pure bs, could someone point it out to me?
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Jim, I thought I had perhaps scanned the article too fast as I also didn't find it problematic like others here seem to have.

. . . . . . . Pete
 
originally posted by Peter Creasey:
originally posted by Florida Jim: I didn't find it nearly as difficult (except as Oswaldo says, the chemistry) as others here seem to.
If there be pure bs, could someone point it out to me?
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Jim, I thought I had perhaps scanned the article too fast as I also didn't find it problematic like others here seem to have.

. . . . . . . Pete
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First of all, he trots out the now discredited notion that minerality arises from the presence of minerals in the wine. Secondly, his idea that different acids impart protons to different regions of the mouth is just plain wrong. But his idea that we can taste redox couples (or that there is active redox chemistry in wine) is loopy beyond my ability to describe. Beyond that, though, it reads fine *cough*

Mark Lipton
 
Mark,
I will, of course, take your word for this as the chemistry of which you speak is beyond me.

But I thought there is redox chemistry in wine, eg., increase in redox potential of wines exposed to oxygen through racking, topping, etc. or, in the presence of SO2, the lowering of redox potential. All of this being important as to its effects on volatile sulphur compounds - in common parlance, "reduction."

Am I being ignorant here?

Best, Jim
 
Ian,
I can forgive him the lingo/slang/double speak but not the pure chemistry of it.
I use my share of euphemisms and 'gobble-up' might just be one of them.
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
Mark,
I will, of course, take your word for this as the chemistry of which you speak is beyond me.

But I thought there is redox chemistry in wine, eg., increase in redox potential of wines exposed to oxygen through racking, topping, etc. or, in the presence of SO2, the lowering of redox potential. All of this being important as to its effects on volatile sulphur compounds - in common parlance, "reduction."

Am I being ignorant here?
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Sorry, Jim, I wasn't making myself clear. What Mr. Smith claimed in his article was that the minerals in the wine were changing oxidation state and that it was the coupling of oxidation and reduction between minerals in the wine that we were tasting. First of all, such redox couples are commonly known as voltaic cells (aka batteries) and, speaking as one who in my youth placed the two poles of 9 V batteries on my tongue, I can tell you that voltaic cells don't taste like much of anything. Moreover, even if the iron in wine were reduced to its +2 (ferrous) state, it would oxidize back to iron(III) (ferric ion) upon exposure to air in a heartbeat... literally. Were that not the case, the blood that emerged from a cut would be blue not red.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Steve Edmunds:
this has the sound of a shell-game, or Jeopardy, or something...
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Interestingly, he doesn't know the difference between P.T. Barnum ("There's a sucker born every minute") and H.L. Mencken ("No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"), or at least who said what.
 
My comment was in the general vein of discussion of the article, Jim, not a reply to yours. In any event, wine chat is all about metaphors, but you wouldn't try to wax precise on chemistry in one para, then slouch into an unchemical metaphor shortly after. Neither would Mark or Joe, or - dare I say it? - Nathan. It sounds unecht.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
Sorry, Jim, I wasn't making myself clear. What Mr. Smith claimed in his article was that the minerals in the wine were changing oxidation state and that it was the coupling of oxidation and reduction between minerals in the wine that we were tasting. First of all, such redox couples are commonly known as voltaic cells (aka batteries) and, speaking as one who in my youth placed the two poles of 9 V batteries on my tongue, I can tell you that voltaic cells don't taste like much of anything. Moreover, even if the iron in wine were reduced to its +2 (ferrous) state, it would oxidize back to iron(III) (ferric ion) upon exposure to air in a heartbeat... literally. Were that not the case, the blood that emerged from a cut would be blue not red.

Mark Lipton
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Mark, would ever consider writing a letter to Wines and Vines and pointing these things out? I read the article and thought wow, this guy really has it all figured out, and I'll bet a lot of others did as well.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:

Mark, would ever consider writing a letter to Wines and Vines and pointing these things out? I read the article and thought wow, this guy really has it all figured out, and I'll bet a lot of others did as well.
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I dunno. It sort of has the feeling of tilting with windmills. If Clark Smith were at all concerned with getting the chemistry right, he'd have run his ideas past a chemist, no? It's not like he doesn't know any, after all, unless those techniques at Vinovation sprang, Athena-like, from his forehead.

On a different front, how do you all feel about his assertion that acidity doesn't decrease with age, but minerality does? It seems to me that most wines get demonstrably less acidic as they age.

Mark Lipton
 
This could be a useful discussion, if anyone still has the patience. I thought sweetness decreased with age, but not acidity. I would expect an old riesling to have lost much of its fruit (perhaps gaining in other secondary aspects), but not its acidity. And there may be a distinction to be made between tartaric acid additions that precipitate and natural acidity.
 
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