Buttery Aromas in Wines

Video Transcript

"If you have ever spent any amount of time around a wine lover, I'm sure you've heard them say that a wine tastes or smells buttery. People especially love to talk about their big, buttery Chardonnay's, and it's true; Chardonnay very often has a buttery aroma, and a buttery flavor. It can come across as butter. Sometimes, people think cream; sometimes, people think sour cream; sometimes, people are reminded of popcorn; and sometimes, people even say Miss Jane, it kind of smells like cheese; and I'm like, that's okay. There is a type of dairy aroma that comes across in wine. It also comes across in red wine. As a matter of fact, a buttery aroma is much more common in red wine, than white wine. The reason why we don't talk about it as much though; is because the buttery aroma in red wine is a little bit more subtle. In a white wine, it's usually jumping out at you. Without getting too technical, I'll tell you that there's a chemical called diacetyl. Diacetyl is the chemical that is used in butter flavorings, including microwave popcorn, the popcorn that you get that is buttered flavored at the movies, and any thing else that's butter flavored at the grocery store. Diacetyl is a natural chemical created during a certain wine making process. It's not in butter, it's not real butter, but it smells like, and tastes like butter, and it gets in your wine sometimes through the process of malolactic fermentation. All you really need to know about that is that it can make your wine taste and smell buttery, and that it's a very nice thing to get a buttery aroma in your wine. "