While I understand everyone’s pallet pick up on different tastes in greater intensity than others. How do distilleries and wineries target the notes they would like in their wine? Or is it luck if the draw?
In: 5
In short, spirits like whiskey get their flavors from the aging process, wines get them from gapes.
Whiskey starts as grain alcohol, and is called white dog and has no flavor beyond the ethanol itself. This high proof whiskey in then aged in wood barrels, the specifics of which vary depending on the kind of whiskey (Scotch, bourbon, Irish, or Canadian). Ethanol is a strong organic solvent, and will absorb molecules from wood called volitile organic compounds, or VOCs. VOCs are the molecules we detect in taste/smell, and are responsible for a wide range of flavors in foods. When people say they are, for example getting notes of cinnamon in a bourbon, that’s because the oak contains small levels of cinnamaldehyde, the same molecule present in cinnamon.
Wine is not aged in wooden barrels, well not most wines, but instead the VOCs come from the grapes themselves. Different species of grapes grown under different soil conditions in different climate conditions both of which vary from region to region all influence the production of the VOCs and their relative abundance. This is what gives wines from different regions they’re unique character profiles.
Edit: there are also wines that are aged, like sherry and port. Here the aging process and the storage vessels adds extra layers of complexity to the flavor profile.
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