Strange Wine Descriptors and Why They Make Sense

Wine critics often describe wines in ways that you find quite humorous, but clearly untrue. Or, are they? If you saw the movie, "Somm," and if you haven't, I highly recommend it (it's on Netflix or at least used to be), you might remember that one wine was described by the curious "freshly cut garden hose." Well, frankly, that's the only time I've ever heard that one, but there are other unusual ones that are quite common. And, believe it or not, there is a scientific basis to each one. If you search hard enough, I'm sure you can find better scientific bases than I am going to provide, but I'll get you started.

• Kerosene -- Kerosene, or sometimes petrol if the review comes from the UK, is a common descriptor for Riesling, especially Riesling with some age on it. In fact, if you're doing a blind tasting and you get a white wine that has yellowed or even browned around the rim and you note that faint, or perhaps not so faint smell of kerosene or even gasoline, your probably smelling the TDN (a phalene) that occurs naturally in Riesling skins and becomes more pronounced as other aromas fade.
• Mice -- This is not a good one and is sometimes found in otherwise buttery Chardonnay and a few somewhat random red wines. Why buttery? Generally speaking, the butter in Chardonnay is a byproduct of malolactic fermentation, the process by which malic acid naturally found in the grapes is converted to lactic acid. We get the butter when the process produces large amounts of diacetyls. But, sometimes the process produces too many lysines and in doing so, produces lysine byproducts that near the back palate give a mousy taste. There are two ways around this: 1) don't drink wine that has been described as mousy, or 2) swallow the wine so fast that it never really hits the back palate.
• Armpit, Sweat, or Sweaty Armpit -- It depends who the reviewer is how you might see this. And, to me, this is much the same secondary flavor that is found in Gatorade. If you love Gatorade, you may also love Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough (New Zealand) as they have similarities. What's going on? Sauvignon Blanc is naturally loaded up with mercaptans (thiols if you prefer). And, the more ultraviolet light that they get, the more the mercaptans come through. Among all Sauvignon Blanc growing regions in the world, the grapes in Marlborough probably get more direct sunlight than perhaps any other and therefore, they have the secondary aromas of sweaty armpit.
• Wet dog -- This is another bad one. You know how your dog smells when it gets out of the bath or the rain? Do you like your wine to smell that way? I hope not. The smell that you're getting is likely trichloroanizole (TCA) and it's what you get when a bottle is corked, i.e., the cork is tainted and has allowed the wine to oxidize in the bottle. So, if you can't tell if the wine that your server brought you is really your wine or your dog, send it back.
• Steamed Cabbage -- So you like screw cap wine because the bottle can't be corked? You like screw caps because they are so easy to deal with? One of the problems with screw caps is that while good corks allow in very, very tiny amounts of oxygen, screw caps allow none. This causes some screw capped wines to go through a reduction (as compared to very gradual oxidation) process and the methyl mercaptans smell like particularly bad steamed cabbage.
• Curry or Pancake Syrup or Manhattan Island -- Have you ever been to Manhattan and thought the air smelled slightly different than anywhere else? The phenomenon is from a lactone known as Soloton or Solotone in common lingo. It's used to produce cheap, artificial maple syrup and it occurs naturally in the finest Vermont maple syrup. It's also quite prevalent, naturally occurring in both Pedro Ximines and Palomino Fino. So, when you are drinking Spanish dessert wines, that is often where the maple syrup comes from. It's why I suggested that Pedro Ximines is a perfect pairing with pancakes. However, when Soloton is found in too much quantity, the maple syrup descriptor changes to curry and that may be too much for my wines.
• Cat Pee -- Unlike wet dog, cat pee is considered a good, not a bad, wine descriptor. Yes, people like it and you probably do as well. You see, there is a thiol known as 4MMP that is found in great quantity in (yes again) Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc as well as Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Semillon, Riesling, and Colombard, as well as some other grapes I'm sure I'm not listing. Where else do you find 4MMP? Check out your litter box. It's loaded up with 4MMP.
• Shit -- I couldn't resist this one and it has a historical context. Ça sent la merde. Ça sent le purin. Voltaire is alleged to have said both when served a particularly high end Burgundy -- one of the finest Pinot Noirs of the 18th century. For those who don't read French, what Voltaire apparently said was "It smells like shit. It smells like liquid manure." What it actually seems to be is something known as 4EP or 4-ethylphenol. To the connoisseur, it is an earthiness and reflection of the terroir of Burgundy and the Piemonte. To some others, it's a toilet getting ready to be flushed.