coffee that will burn your tongue if you don’t slurp air through it while you sip. The sample coats your tongue and the air draws volatile parts of the sample into your nose via the retronasal passage that joins your mouth and nose. Typically, you have a different perception of the same wine when assessed orthonasally or retronasally. In addition, only about 10 per cent of our perception of a wine is via the tongue. The rest is retronasal. Plug your nose and try it some time. Although we get clues about flavours such as sweetness and sourness from the nose, we only experience them directly by tasting. In the mouth we also detect astringency, body, and aftertaste. Astringency and temperature are sensations, not flavours. Astringency results from the physical removal of proteins from the tongue and teeth. Heat from high alcohol is chemical heat that results from actuating temperature-sensing neurons, not a flavour.


After you taste the sample and sort out the flavours, body, and balance, check the pH.


pH affects the whole style of wine you make. There is a spectrum of flavours that accompanies the various levels of pH for any grape variety. If you don’t like the spectrum you’re in,


Are you getting enough?


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30 British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Summer 2015


change the pH. Be sure to check your free sulfite to ensure that it’s appropriate. If you’re doing a malolactic


fermentation, pH must be high enough and sulfite low enough or nothing will happen. If you require acidity and fresh fruit character, pH must be low enough and sulfite high enough to maintain fruit quality.


Oh yes, the spray bottle. After removing a sample from the sampling port, a spray of one g/L KMS and one g/L of citric acid will inhibit hairy things from growing on your sampling ports.


There’s nothing so scary as to walk into a cellar and smell something that puts you off. In November or December it might be a whiff of rotten egg, which you can track down by nose, but other times it might be the smell of rotting fruit. The rotting fruit smell can be the hardest to track down because there might not be a single source. It probably means that you must check for wine, fruit, or juice residues in drains, under tanks, around pump and hose seals, or any one of a hundred places.


Something is growing there and when you least expect it, it’ll getcha.


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