Wine Flavors 101: What does it mean for a wine to be “savory”? (Plus, a tasting of two terrific pinot noirs)
Tasting vocabulary is one of wine’s biggest barriers to entry. It’s easy to throw up your hands and declare it nonsense—as a wine-frustrated friend did recently on a recent trip to Sonoma, glancing at wine list descriptors like “saline” and “clove” and saying, “This is bullshit…right?”
Tomatoes, an umami-rich food. This image comes from the Umami Information Center, which is…apparently a thing.
But tasting notes are straightforward once you get to know them, as you know if you’ve sat through all those interminable hours in wine school. (Not that interminable. I mean, there was wine.) These words aren’t just airy gibberish used to pad out labels. They’re the clues the wine gives you about its chemical composition, which gives you additional clues about how and where it was grown, and what went into making it.
Get a whiff of bell pepper in your wine? You’re smelling pyrazines, which could mean that the wine was picked early with less ripeness, or that it’s made from a pyrazine-heavy grape, like Sauvignon Blanc. Smell vanilla? That’s vanillin, a compound that you’ll recognize as the stuff they use to flavor artificial vanilla for baking. It occurs naturally in oak, which means its presence says that your wine was aged in oak barrels. It’s not magic—it’s just food science. Even if you’re not a pro and find it tough to discern wine aromas yourself, you can still appreciate the finely-tuned noses of wine professionals, like the ones in SevenFifty Daily’s SuperTasters video series.
For the more wine-savvy, if you haven’t noticed, this is going to be a bit of a beginner post, so feel free to skip to the reviews.
Where do savory flavors come from?
Beef, another umami-rich food. Image source: Umami Information Center.
One descriptor that often baffles wine beginners is the word “savory,” also sometimes called “umami.” It’s not usually a word people usually associate with beverages. How can a wine taste like meat, mushrooms, or soy sauce? It all comes down to amino acids like aspartate and glutamate, which are responsible for savory flavors in a wide variety of foods, wine included.
What kinds of wines have savory flavors? These flavors are often found in dry red wines, though lees-aged wines like Champagne or Sherry often sport savory flavors because of their extended contact with umami-rich yeast. Often, the flavor is the result of the choice of grape. Grapes sometimes described as savory include Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Aging can produce or enhance savory flavors, often described as “mushroom,” “meat,” or “leather.”
Savory as a style of wine
Often, when we talk about savory wines, we’re talking about a particular style of wine. You can think of “savory” as one end of a spectrum, with “fruity” on the opposite end.
A winemaker shooting for a savory wine style will usually grow wines in a cooler climate (or a cooler pocket of a warmer climate), harvest earlier to preserve delicate flavors, and use a less extractive style of winemaking. These wines will usually be less ripe and feature a lighter body and color, less alcohol, and flavors that are more earthy, herbaceous, and reserved. This is often referred to as an “Old World style” because it’s a style of wine more typical for European wines.
In contrast, a fruity style of wine tends to come from a warmer climate, with a later harvest for more residual sugar and a more extractive style, leading to a riper style with a high alcohol content, full body, smooth tannins, and intense, ripe, jammy fruit flavors. We sometimes call this a “New World” or “international” style.
Here’s a handy infographic. Please credit me with a link to this site if you use this image elsewhere.
Tasting: savory expressions of pinot noir from the Sonoma Coast
Europe is the traditional home of the savory style of wine, but today, I’d like to highlight some savory wines that come from the traditional home of ripe, boozy, heavily extracted wines: California. Thing is, Californian wines don’t have to be jammy and heavy. These wines show that the cooler climates and more contemplative winemakers of the Sonoma Coast can give you delicate flavors and elegant tannins at a decent price. These represent the Californian style as it was meant to be: juicy but not too ripe, concentrated but not overextracted.
2016 La Follette Heintz Vineyard Pinot Noir ($60): This wine opens with an intense nose of earth and smoke. With bright acidity and a lighter body more reminiscent of Old World wines than the often-oversaturated Pinot Noirs that California tends to offer, its 13.7% alcohol is well-integrated. The tannins are chewy and give enough of a heft to the wine to balance its concentrated, fresh red cherry and plum notes. It finishes on an herbal, spicy, meaty note almost reminiscent of barbecue.
2020 Paul Hobbs Crossbarn Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($40): The color is a lovely medium ruby and the nose is all wet stone and savory, foresty herbaceousness. It’s well-structured, with medium-high acidity balancing its gentle, brambly red fruit. The tannins are soft, but grippy, and I didn’t find myself wanting more of a bite than was already there. Delicate flavors of smoke and mushroom give way to a pleasantly bitter finish.
