Things You'll Need:
- Red wine glass
- White wine glass
- Bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from California
- Bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand
- Bottle of Carmenère from Maipo Valley, Chile
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Step 1
Where does the smoke come from? Smokiness, as a descriptor for the aroma of a wine, has become commonplace. More and more, especially with the practice of fermenting and aging wines in oak barrels, the word "smoky" has become synonymous with certain types of grapes and even certain areas of the world that grow grapes and make wine. We will explore those techniques that impart smoke to the bouquet of a wine, but we will also take a closer look at a couple other reasons behind why a wine might have a smokiness to it. The three causes for a smoky aroma that we will be exploring are: the use of oak, the effect of the soil and the grape itself.
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Step 2
How the use of oak affects the smokiness of a wine. The use of oak barrels in wine-making is so common now that it's hardly given a second thought, but there are many intricacies that go into the preparation of the barrels themselves. How the oak is used during the wine-making process can greatly affect it's smell and flavor. Barrels, or "barriques" if they are smaller barrels, are almost always made by hand. The wood is bent into the shape of the barrel by toasting the boards of the barrel over an open fire until they soften and bend. This toasting adds an obvious smoky quality to the wood that, were you standing next to the barrel itself, you would be able to smell without any trouble. In addition to the initial toasting, some vintners pride themselves on toasting the insides of the barrel an additional time to add an even darker, more complex toasty quality to the wood. The lids of the barrels, which obviously do not need to be toasted, are, often times toasted to add flavor. When a wine is fermented in a barrel such as this, it picks up the flavors of the wood as it sits. An oak barrel alone would add a certain amount of "woody" character to a wine, but when it is a barrel that has received extra treatment, it imparts an even heavier smoke aroma. Ask your knowledgeable wine store retailer for a Cabernet Sauvignon from California that she knows of that has been fermented or aged in toasted oak barrels. When you pour it into your glass, swirl it around and stick your nose in. You should be able to smell very distinct campfire-like scents, especially right out of the bottle.
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Step 3
How the soil the grapes are grown in affects the smokiness of a wine. The soil that a grape is grown in can make a Syrah grape that is grown in the Rhône Valley of France and a Syrah grape that is grown in southern Australia taste like they are from two different planets. This is what the French call "terroir." The idea is that a wine tastes the way it tastes due in large part to where it is grown. A Sauvignon Blanc grown in the Loire Valley, like a Sancerre, can be a racey, yet refined, wine. The soils there are clay and limestone based, which produce grapes that are citrus laden and delicate. Take the same grape in New Zealand, in a vineyard where the soil is mostly small stones and pebbles, and the wine made from these grapes is a tightly wound, sometimes mouth-puckering explosion of grapefruit and green herbs. It also commonly produces a heavy scent of smoky flint that is absent in the Sauvignon Blancs of almost every other region in the world.
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Step 4
How the grape itself can affect the smokiness of a wine. There are certain tell tale signs that any experienced sommelier or wine taster can look for in particular grape variatals. A Merlot will usually have a low acidity, giving it the "velvety" texture that those who love it look for. A Gewurztraminer will usually have the scent of lychee when poured from the bottle. And one widely overlooked grape, very popular in Chile, will almost always have a smoky scent, no matter where it was grown or how it was fermented and aged. That grape is Carmenère. For many years in Chile, thousands of vines were mistaken to be Merlot vines and were being vinted and bottled that way. That all ended in the 1990's when a viticulturalist, who had tasted the wines and knew they had to be something other than Merlot, tested the DNA of those vines. He was correct, and the vines turned out to be Carmenère, a since long forgotten varietal once used in Bordeaux. The inherent dark nature of the wines made from this grape will almost always have notes of chocolate, coffee and, invariably, smoke. Many a sommelier has been tricked into believing they are drinking an oak fermented or oak aged wine, when the wine has actually never spent one minute inside a barrel!
