Link to Article on "Minerality"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/foo ... le4536705/

With all due respect (more to the author than you, Craig), this article really breaks no new ground. Yes, some misguided individuals continue to insist that what they're smelling in the wine are the minerals from the soil, but I think that most wine drinkers appreciate the naivete of such a view. For instance, knowing that the "petrol" notes in Riesling come from a dimethyldihydronaphthalene does nothing to dissuade me from using that term in a tasting note.

Just my $0.02,
Mark Lipton

With all due respect (more to the author than you, Craig), this article really breaks no new ground. Yes, some misguided individuals continue to insist that what they're smelling in the wine are the minerals from the soil, but I think that most wine drinkers appreciate the naivete of such a view. For instance, knowing that the "petrol" notes in Riesling come from a dimethyldihydronaphthalene does nothing to dissuade me from using that term in a tasting note.

Just my $0.02,
Mark Lipton

Agreed. That doesn't invalidate, though, the use of mineral descriptors, any more than the absence of, say, gooseberry in the glass invalidates it as a descriptor for some Sauvignon blanc, etc. etc.

"And key minerals such as calcium, potassium, magnesium, silicon and sodium mainly act as nutrients for the plant, modifying the balance of organic compounds that we actually can smell and taste."

The author does not actually know what a mineral is. Ca, K, Mg etc are elements, not minerals.

“It is the buzzword,” says Alex Maltman, a geologist and professor in the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. “But before the year 2000, it didn’t exist. It’s come from nowhere and it’s astonishing.”

It sure is a current buzzword. Interestingly, Steve Slatcher shows on his blog the increased use of the word minerality in CellarTracker notes: it really took off there around 2003.

With all due respect (more to the author than you, Craig), this article really breaks no new ground.

True, but it also appears to be exceedingly rare to see new ground broken in the discussion of "minerality". We likely need some hard science to achieve that.

The author does not actually know what a mineral is. Ca, K, Mg etc are elements, not minerals.

Depends on who you ask for the definition. Mineralogists would agree with you, and they would distinguish between rocks and minerals too. But when talking about plant nutrition those elements are often referred to as minerals.

As I see it, there is a spectrum of the degree to which TN terms correspond with physical reality. Acidity, sugar and tannins are at one end as being very close. Then there are the fruit and veg aromas, where the same compounds are in many cases common to the wine and the fruit or veg. After that, terms like petrol, smoke and leather, where the smell/taste is similar, but the uderlying chemicals are different and/or various. Then, right at the other end of the spectrum there are very fanciful desriptions that are totally metaphorical - "nymphs dancing in the morning" sort of thing.

I reckon mineral descriptors occupy quite a range on the spectrum - from petrol/smoke to fanciful.

My main objection to the term minerality is a practical one - it means very different things to different people, so I am not sure how useful it is in communication. As I have already pointed out, there is not even agreement on what a mineral is.

The author does not actually know what a mineral is. Ca, K, Mg etc are elements, not minerals.

Depends on who you ask for the definition. Mineralogists would agree with you, and they would distinguish between rocks and minerals too. But when talking about plant nutrition those elements are often referred to as minerals.

Yes, I would agree with you re plant nutrition. But people who talk about feeding their plants potasium (K) or magnesium (Mg) are most definitly NOT talking about the elements, but a mineral salt that contains these elements. Potasium, sodium, magnesium and to a leeser extent calcium (from what I recall from my chemistry education) are at best very unstable in normal environments and at worst react explosively with any sort of moisture. I recall having to meticulously dry chemical equipment before disolving a small chunk of metalic sodium in some alcohol for an experiment in a Stage 1 (?) Uni course.

As an amature minerologyst with a reasonably sized collection of minerals, the difference between a rock and a mineral is stark. A rock is composed of a number (lot) of minerals.