Can you taste the soil in wines? This is the claim of many a wine producer, but in practice it has been proven that wine roots do not get mineral elements from the underlying rocks. But of course, strictly speaking this is not what we most often refer to when speaking about “mineral” wines. We use it as a shorthand for a group of taste sensations that do not fall into the other categories like “fruit”. These sensations do not have to come directly from the rocks, but in our tasting language this is how we can best describe them.
A recent tasting of wines from Faugères was an opportunity to test whether we can find such elements of minerality in wines from one area that professes to have a relatively uniform soil type.
Faugères in Languedoc has a homogenous type of soil, made of various types of schist that is poor in nutrients and drains well while preserving water underneath. Schist is a rock type that consists of layers of minerals and splits into thin plates. Faugères har different types of schist that have different porousness and hardness. The harder the rock, the poorer the soil. It is said that in Faugères the soil talks, not the grape.
Faugères produces mostly red wine, with some rosé and a little white. The tasting had one white, one rosé and four red Faugères wines. When trying to find common elements in the wines, the tasters pointed out some characteristics that seemed to be more or less in common to all of them.
First, although you had plenty of fruit in the nose of the wines, the taste did not follow – it was much more austere, without any fruity yamminess. We struggled to find a description for the dominant features – perhaps something close to wet stones. All the wines had good acidity and the reds displayed slightly varying levels of round tannins.
Second, there seemed to be a certain final sour note in most of the wines. This was not disturbing, just something that emphasised the austere taste. It points to the general aspect of wines that display “minerality” – they tend to be described as refreshing and zesty.
The topic of terroir and mineralogy is fashionable and even wine professionals disagree what exactly we are talking about (see the Jancis Robinson article in the FT). There is speculation whether concrete vats or clay amphorae can give wines mineral character under fermentation, although this probably would not be filed under any terroir feature. In any case, there is much more to discover under minerality.
More about these topics: Jancis Robinson “Minerality report”, FT 25/1/2020; Rosemary George: “The Wines of Faugères”; and Britt Karlsson – Per Karlsson – Bengt Rydén: Languedoc Roussillon, södra Frankrikes viner.
Wines tasted: Crus Faugères Parfum de Schistes Blanc 2018; Domaine Balliccioni Faugères Tradition Rosé 2017; Domaine de Fenouillet Faugères Extraits des Schistes 2016; Château de la Liquiere Faugères Les Amandiers 2014 ; Domaine Valambelle Faugères Grande Cuvée 2013; Domaine des Pres-Lasses Faugères Castel Viel 2011
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