Okanagan Wine School Lesson #3: What the Heck is Minerality?

Taste this wine and you’ll know.

What do wine reviewers and mining journals have in common? Both are obsessed with minerality these days. In the wine world, the first trick is in the defining of it: the generally accepted parameters include a wine that tastes flinty, or tastes of wet stones, chalk or limestone. French Chablis, grown in famous limestone soils, is in many ways the prototypical example. The second trick comes from the contention of scientists that grapes and the consequent wine have little to no ability to actually absorb any of the minerals in the surrounding soils. Grapes don’t taste like minerals, so how can wine? Oh. But crack a bottle of the 2015 Sperling Vision Chardonnay ($32)—grown in limestone soils near Kelowna—give it a swirl, take a sip and tell me you don’t taste minerals. Go figure.

2015 Sperling Vision Chardonnay, $32