Can you taste soil in wine? Minerality and terroir, put to the test.

The idea of terroir

Terroir is the idea that a wine reflects the place it comes from: the soil, the climate, the slope, the exposure and the way people farm it. Few wine lovers doubt that place matters. The question is how, and whether soil can be tasted directly.

Can vines take up the taste of rocks?

Vines take up water and dissolved mineral nutrients such as potassium, calcium and magnesium through their roots. But those minerals are present in wine at very low levels, mostly below what we can taste, and they do not taste of stone.

So the romantic image of a vine sucking up the flavor of limestone or slate does not hold up scientifically.

So what is minerality?

Even so, “minerality” is a real impression that tasters share. Researchers link it to things such as high acidity, a lean structure with little fruit or oak, certain sulfur compounds produced during winemaking, and even salty or chalky textures.

In other words, minerality is real as a sensation, but it does not come from tasting rock particles.

How soil really shapes wine

Soil matters, but indirectly. It controls how much water the vine gets and when, how warm the roots are, how much nitrogen is available and how vigorously the vine grows. Those factors influence ripening, berry size, acidity and the balance of the grapes, and therefore the style of the wine.

In The Science of Wine, Jamie puts the question to a specialist scientist and a wine producer before giving his final verdict.