Discover The Different Fruit Flavors In Your Favorite Red Wine

Are you like any other wine drinkers that are curious and confused about why wine experts and sommeliers say that a particular fruit note is found in a bottle of wine? But for a casual drinker, wines taste just about the same and that they are made from grapes.

However, you can even tell personally by experience that you tasted a hint of green apple and peach in your wine on one occasion and also discover more fruit flavors in it.

We know that all this information is intriguing enough, so let us discover how all these different fruit flavors magically appear in our wine and how it affects the taste of our favorite vino.

It is just only grapes..but science happens

Wine is made through the fermentation process, that’s for sure, and it only uses one fruit source – grapes. However, something magical happens during the process, and scientifically it is called “stereoisomers.”

In science, stereoisomers are aroma compounds that are released during the fermentation process.

And every wine carries a hundred stereoisomers, which are great playing factors that affect the taste and the smell of a wine. Once our senses react to these compounds, our brain starts to come up with different and familiar tastes leading us to detect many fruit flavors when we already know it is just grape juice.

Tasted so many fruit flavors in one glass, how come it is possible?

Even though it is explained and backed with science, there’s still a lot of questions about why we smell and taste fruit-based notes in our wine. The stereoisomers are just a scientific way to explain all these different tastes we experience in a single bottle of wine.

However, this just gets complicated, as each reviewer and wine critic uses their own language to explain their experience (thus it is subjective). As you go and practice drinking a bottle of wine, you will also learn to memorize the taste once it hits your palate.

As others say, if you get to enjoy red plum, blackberries, and cherries so much compared to other fruits, their taste will register and be stored in your memory. And any hint of their scent or taste from any other food or drink will be automatically recognized by your brain.

How many fruit flavors are there? How come there’s only a few that are recognizable.

There are a lot of fruit flavors found in a single bottle of wine, and every type of wine (red and white) has distinct fruit flavor notes found in them. You might have recognized the taste of black plum, prunes, dragon fruit, and pomegranate. You might have also tasted a hint of lemon zest, peach, and orange at one time.

As you go along with your wine tasting journey, you will come to familiarize or even memorize all these distinct tastes, and you will be able to differentiate and tell what suits your palate best.

In the meantime, here’s a list of the common fruit flavors found in a single bottle of red wine.

Red Wine and Its Fruit Flavors
We already know that the primary type of wine is the reds and the white. But did you know that a red bottle of wine is differentiated with two types of fruit flavors? There are black fruit and red fruit flavors content found in a different bottle of wine. See the list below:

Black Fruits & Berries

• Blackberry
• Black Currant
• Marionberry
• Black Plum
• Blueberry
• Black Cherry
• Black Raspberry
• Acai
• Jam
• Prune
• Fig
• Black Raisins

Wine 101: The likes of the 1995 Latour Bordeaux Red Wine has a dark berry, french roast, cigar box, and fresh herbs is considered as best enjoyed vintage wine as it exhibits youthful aromatics that entice every wine drinker to take a glass. The Cabernet Sauvignon, together with other wines like the Malbec, Tempranillo, Syrah, is known to have black fruits and berries notes in it as well.

Red Fruits & Berries

• Cranberry
• Pomegranate
• Red Currant
• Bing Cherry
• Strawberry
• Cherry
• Raspberry
• Red Plum
• Goji Berry
• Dragon Fruit
• Candied Cherries
• Candied Berries

Wine 101: Wines known for red fruit and berries are the famous Pinot Noir and Merlot, and they come alongside other wines like Grenache, Sangiovese, and Nebbiolo. When you take a sip of Pinot Noir, you can tell right away that it has this fruit-forward character- a mix of strawberry, cherry, raspberry, and blackberry – which will surely dominate your palate.

Red Sparkling Wine

The truth with red sparkling wine is there are only few wine enthusiasts who actually enjoy it. However, there are really good bottles of red sparkling wine that you can enjoy. You can try the following:

• Lambrusco
• Sparkling Shiraz
• Brachetto D’Acqui

Red sparkling wine is less popular yet it is getting more acknowledgement these days. If you want to try something new, you can go with a red sparkling wine instead of getting white. Having a glass of red sparkling wine is best during winter, refreshing when served chilly, yet gives off enough warmth.

Takeaway

Every wine tasting experience is a personal and subjective experience. However, with many research and wine tasting events where experts and wine critics (with formal studies) are invited, specific fruit flavors are now embedded to be recognized in a single bottle of wine. But with all of these, your wine drinking experience should stay unique even yours might be quite different from what others encounter. Remember, it is how you enjoy the moment and your glass of wine matters.