Plum, tobacco, grass, spice, etc. flavors

I notice on the back of various commercial wines they may read "has a taste of plum, blackberry, mocha and spice" or "has a taste of passionfruit, grass and citrus".
These are just a couple of examples as most wines read something like the above. My question is, how, if the wines are made only with grapes, are they getting the plum, tobacco, grass, blackberry, etc. flavors?
I realize the oak barrels will lend some flavors but not following how I am getting grass, blackberry, mocha, etc. in the wine.
Thanks.

unless it says 100 % grape, it isnt.
http://www.ttb.gov/pdf/brochures/p51901.pdf

and power of suggestion......ummmmm that has a hint of coconut.
just about everyone in the room will get that in there head immediately.
while there is no coconut at all....

jamesngalveston said:

unless it says 100 % grape, it isnt.
http://www.ttb.gov/pdf/brochures/p51901.pdf

Click to expand...

Great read, thanks James.

jamesngalveston said:

and power of suggestion......ummmmm that has a hint of coconut.
just about everyone in the room will get that in there head immediately.
while there is no coconut at all....

Click to expand...

No I get that. My point is almost every bottle of wine has some reference to these flavors/qualities. How are they achieving this?
Also, one of our upper end wine shops down here told me that his wines(he only carries Napa Valley wines (no commercial wines, ie: Barefoot, Kendall Jackson, etc.) are made strictly with grapes. No yeast or sugar added, only what naturally occurs in/on the grapes themselves. With that said, then how would one get a blackberry, plum, mocha flavor?

James, I am not sure that I agree with you. Wineforfun, here's why: What does a grape taste like? If your answer is that a grape tastes like... a grape then you have answered your own question, but if you think that the flavor of anything is incredibly complex and that it is very possible to educate your palate to identify the complex flavors in things thus enabling folk with an educated palate and nose to talk about those flavors and aromas in ways others can verify (or not) and that a dozen people with "educated" palates and noses would be able to detect the same flavor notes even if they had no opportunity to be influenced by one another then it may very true be that a certain varietal or blend of grapes fermented together by a particular wine maker might provide grass flavors and mocha and coconut and spice and citrus. Sadly, my palate and nose are still very uneducated.

This is a method employed by tasters to describe the flavor profiles of a particular wine. This does not mean that it actually containes these as ingredients.

For example, A classic cabernet will typically have blackberry or cherry flavors even though it is made from 100% cabernet grapes. Best to read the label carefully. If it describes its flavors, then I would expect that they also give you the grapes used.

Another example would be chardonnay which typically has flavors of peach or straw. This is simply the flavors that the grape has provided.

You will also learn that the many yeast strains are a big consideration when crafting a wine. Even tannins can have an impact on palate, or one's perception of the taste. And then you have terroir.

Bernard/John,
Now that makes some sense to me. The different "flavors" are just characteristics of each grape and its fermenting and aging.

Most tasting notes are complete BS and do little to help the consumer decide if the wine is "good" or not.

Ex: "This is gorgeous, with lush linzer torte, boysenberry pâte de fruit and plum sauce notes that captivate, while anise, Lapsang souchong tea and singed apple wood notes fill in the background. The long finish is fleshy and driven."

Thig, I completely agree with your point that the tasting notes have no bearing whatsoever on whether a wine is "good" or not, but I tend to think of taste notes much like someone providing me with a picture of how much red and how much yellow and how much white and how much black is in a particular shade of blue. Doesn't tell me whether that shade is good and it cannot tell me whether I ought to like that shade but it can provide me with some information about the "profile" of the shade. If I want to try to match it or mix that shade myself, that kind of information might be useful, and it may be a useful way to talk about that blue rather than just say that it was blue. And hey! "blue is just blue" really tells me very little about the blue and very little about why I might respond to that particular blue in a particular way that another blue fails to have the same effect.. But whether a flavor "captivates" or is "fleshy" or "driven" would seem to me to be telling me more about the writer than about the wine.

Thig said:

Ex: "This is gorgeous, with lush linzer torte, boysenberry pâte de fruit and plum sauce notes that captivate, while anise, Lapsang souchong tea and singed apple wood notes fill in the background. The long finish is fleshy and driven."

Click to expand...

haha
That line is so true and typical of what I read on the back of most bottles. For me, it is all about taste. I often wondered what a long finish was as I thought once I swallowed the wine, it was finished.

My question was really how they were coming up with these so-called flavors and I think I have my answer with the characteristics of different grapes.

Thig i agree, and as far as developing a palate sensitive enough to taste blackberries and lavender in a grape wine, that is a clever brain.
I wish that I could, but I do not even like grape wine, and i have never tasted a grape in my mango, never tasted mango in my blackberry and never have tasted a blueberry in my dragon blood.
I guess i am one of the few mis fortuned taste bud people..

To each his/her own on tasting wines. Properly aged they will change their flavor profile. A grape that's stripped of it's sugars won't taste much like the original grape any more. The whole process of selecting grapes, oak and yeast will yield differences.

I'm not saying I agree with those BS tasting notes. They are 100% subjective. But the notion that a fermented grape can taste like other fruit is completely agreeable with my experiences. I've even drank beer that tasted of apricots or grapefruit. I drank a Belgium beer once that tasted of bubble gum.

Thig said:

"The long finish is fleshy and driven."

Click to expand...

I had a girlfriend like that once!

I am still learning how to pickout these flavours myself, but I can assure you that they do exist. Most of this has to do with chemistry and nice aromatics created as fermentation by products. Oak can add some obvious flavours. But, it is very possible for a fermented beverage to have a wide range of flavours not typically associated with grapes without having non grape products added to them.

I do not doubt that people have better taste buds then others..I smoke...
Maybe my taste buds are dead....I wish I could taste all these things as others..but i cant.
I got into this to make fruit wine that taste like the fruit I started with.
If all of a sudden my strawberry/blackberry taste like grapes..Im guitting.

jamesngalveston said:

I do not doubt that people have better taste buds then others..I smoke...
Maybe my taste buds are dead....I wish I could taste all these things as others..but i cant.
I got into this to make fruit wine that taste like the fruit I started with.
If all of a sudden my strawberry/blackberry taste like grapes..Im guitting.

Click to expand...

It takes time and practice, I did not really start being able to appreciate the subtle flavours of wine until after I started enjoying good whiskie where such flavours are more obvious. From there I was able to jump back into wine and find a lot more of these flavours that they talk about.

Heh, strawberries that taste like grapes.. now that would be somthin

seth I have been a whiskey drinker for 45 years...I love my good whiskeys for sure. i like black maple hill 21, forty creek, but my go to almost everyday is canandian club, are cc sherry cask.
glad u appreciate good whiskey...

Yeah, I really learned to appreciate wine through whiskie, my mainstay is bourbon, but I am adventuring into scotch. My go to bourbon is buffalo trace or eagle rare.

I can not claim to have tried those whiskies though, I might need to pony up.