Wine Flavors

This page describes the theory of wine flavors. It is a work in Progress, and some of the ideas here have not been thoroughly tested, so be free to add comments if you have something to add, or your own data do not match the theories on this page.

What is a Flavor?

A bottle of wine contains up to 7 flavors that may be detected when tasting the wine. Whether or not you are able to detect a flavor depends on the intensity of the flavor in the wine and of the wines age. Each flavor has a certain vintage the wine must obtain before the flavor shows. A wine may lose some of its flavors as it age, if alcohol or acid levels are not high enough, but the original flavors are still there even if they cannot be detected when drinking. This means they can still be used for other purposes where the hidden flavor is required.

Flavors originate from the soil where the vinyard is located, and a single vinyard may contain up to 5 flavors. To get more flavors in the wine, grapes from different vinyards must be blended in the barrel. Each flavor originates from assumably circular blobs, with maximum strength at the center, and gets more dilluted the farther the vinyard is from the flavor center. This is assumed to be true for both the intensity and the complexity of the flavor.

Flavor Intensity

When you drink a glass of wine, the flavors will show up in different categories in the glass: Overflowing, Bursting, Intense, Ample, Displays, Hints and Fluttering. Each flavor is in a distinct category. The category reflects the intensity of the flavor.

Intensity categories are determined at the outset partially by how far away your vineyards are from the centers of the flavor blobs in the area. What other factors may play a role, such as the quality, sugar, tannin, acid levels and aging is yet unknown, although it is certain that aging plays an important role.

When Can a Flavor be Tasted?

The 2 factors determining if a flavor can be tasted is the intensity and the glass quality. The complexity seems to have nothing to do with this.

Flavor Complexity

Each flavor has 3 tiers listed as Taste Category, Primary Tastes and Secondary Tastes in the flavor list. If the flavor appear as a tier 1 taste it has low complexity, and if it appears as a tier 3 taste it has high complexity.

The complexity depends on the distance of your vineyard from the center of the flavor blob, as well as the quality of your wine glass.