Skin Contact White Descriptors...(long/pedantic/boring)

First of all, thank you Tom for kicking this discussion off. I have been pretty confused about these wines and the terminology, and your introduction was very useful to me. Now for a few random points in part response to some of the replies.

Presumably phenol is very much the smell of carbolic soap? I have no idea how common that is now, but I remember it well from my youth. Unlike many others, I found I quite liked the smell at the time, but I wouldn't want it in wine.

Surely over-ripe apple, or cider, is a sign of oxidation, and will be found on those wines that have been matured oxidatively? I believe the chemical responsible is acetaldehyde. That is certainly one of the oxidation products of ethanol, but I am not 100% sure it is what you get in over-ripe apples.

I think it is important to distinguish between phenol and the broad category of phenolics. I am sure most phenols smell and taste nothing like phenol. Here is an abbreviated version of the glossary entry for phenolics in Clark Smith's book Postmodern Winemaking: "A broad class of organic compounds that contribute many of wine's characteristics, including its color, texture, and many of its flavors. A phenolic is a compound containing a benzene ring with an -OH bonded to it. Because they are generally not very soluble, they exist in wine as suspended beads called colloids. They include tannins and anthocyanins."

First of all, thank you Tom for kicking this discussion off. I have been pretty confused about these wines and the terminology, and your introduction was very useful to me. Now for a few random points in part response to some of the replies.

Presumably phenol is very much the smell of carbolic soap? I have no idea how common that is now, but I remember it well from my youth. Unlike many others, I found I quite liked the smell at the time, but I wouldn't want it in wine.

Surely over-ripe apple, or cider, is a sign of oxidation, and will be found on those wines that have been matured oxidatively? I believe the chemical responsible is acetaldehyde. That is certainly one of the oxidation products of ethanol, but I am not 100% sure it is what you get in over-ripe apples.

I think it is important to distinguish between phenol and the broad category of phenolics. I am sure most phenols smell and taste nothing like phenol. Here is an abbreviated version of the glossary entry for phenolics in Clark Smith's book Postmodern Winemaking: "A broad class of organic compounds that contribute many of wine's characteristics, including its color, texture, and many of its flavors. A phenolic is a compound containing a benzene ring with an -OH bonded to it. Because they are generally not very soluble, they exist in wine as suspended beads called colloids. They include tannins and anthocyanins."

Thanks for your comments, Steve. I find what I'm smelling/tasting mostly in skin-contact whites made in a reductive style. So I'm pretty sure it's not
an oxidation product. I'm familiar w/ the smell of acetaldehyde and that's not what I'm usually picking up, except in some of the wines made in
an oxidative style...then I'll sometimes pick it up.
But I'm pretty sure what I'm calling "phenolic" is not the smell of phenol. It may be some higher-order phenol...I just don't know. But it's a pretty
distinctive smell. We had a SauvBlanc Wed night & everybody immediately labeled it as a skin-contact white from that smell. Sure enough, when I went to
the wineries (Piedrasassi) WebSite, it was a SauvBlanc made w/ a yr's worth of skin-contact.
My copy of Clark's book should arrive today & I'm looking forward to reading it.
Tom

My copy of Clark's book should arrive today & I'm looking forward to reading it.

I'd be interested to know what you think of it.

I was not impressed - not least because many points were repeated ad nauseam, and they annoyed me more each time I read them. If he cut out the repetition, and added a bit more explanation, it would be a shorter book and more useful. That said, I am sure I shall refer back to bits of information, as indeed I did in my last post.

OK, this chemist will weigh in on the subject of the smell of phenol. Tom, you almost certainly DO know the smell: it's the smell of Chloraseptic cough drops, etc. It's closely related to the smell of Band-Aids, which is the smell of meta-cresol (3-methylphenol), a close relative of phenol. Bretty aromas can be called "phenolic" since 4-ethylphenol is one of the primary constituents thereof.

Thanks for the treatise on skin-contact and orange wines, too.

Mark Lipton

Mark,

A vaguely related question: I occasionally teach a 'wine defects' class, and I've tried to find something that clearly replicates the smell of old-fashioned Band-Aid (to be exact, when I was a kid there was an English product called Elastoplast, which to my memory was very close). What is the closest I can come to that, Chloraseptic?

Within any given category of wine you would expect to see “similarities”, no? (Or at least be able to recognize or identify the “tell tale sign” for a given wine category).

Salute

A vaguely related question: I occasionally teach a 'wine defects' class, and I've tried to find something that clearly replicates the smell of old-fashioned Band-Aid (to be exact, when I was a kid there was an English product called Elastoplast, which to my memory was very close). What is the closest I can come to that, Chloraseptic?

Oliver,
If you want to send me a mailing address, I can send you a small sample of pure meta-cresol, which I think should be spot on with your memory of Elastoplast. In return, you can bring along some of that amazing Aceto Balsamico Vecchio to the next get-together in the Bay Area

Mark Lipton