When you start to take an interest in the wine industry, you quickly realize that you have to immerse yourself in a new vocabulary full of words that you don't always understand. Today, we introduce you to the oenology word “ Empyreumatic ”. Empyreuma-what ? Nothing better than a lexical discovery to amaze your guests tonight!
The word empyreumatic is used in oenological jargon to describe a family of aromas , that of smoked, burnt, dried, grilled smells . You can smell caramel, chocolate, coffee, smoke, and toast. Just as many empyreumatic notes. And yes !
Where does this come from? Wine that has been aged in wooden barrels, not in stainless steel vats. It is during the manufacture of the barrel that everything is decided: the cooper can choose to heat the staves more or less (parts of oak wood which form with others the wall of the barrels) and bring these singular notes of roasting . We give you the sentence: "This wine has beautiful empyreumatic nuances" Just pronounce it well and you're done!
Organic wines that are called empyreumatic are red wines. To detect the empyreumatic notes of an organic wine , it is necessary to implement tasting techniques. First of all by observing the wine to learn more about its color and its intensity.
Thereafter, it will be necessary to look at the edge of the glass. To know if the wine is rather thick or light and to know its alcohol content, you gently turn your glass. Once the organic wine has done a few turns on itself, you can feel it, make it do a few new turns. Then smell it one last time before taking a swig. Once the liquid is in your mouth, each part of the tongue and palate awakens and gives you precise sensations:
• on the tip of the tongue, we can distinguish sweetness
• on the right side, we detect the acidity
• the left side, the salty
• the back of the tongue, bitterness
• the gums detect the tannins of the wine
To discover all the aromas of a wine , we advise you to keep it for a few seconds in the mouth to allow your senses to gradually awaken. To find empyreumatic notes, you can also use the technique of retro-olfaction, which consists of sucking in air and swirling the wine around in your mouth. This method makes it possible to aerate the organic wine and make it reveal all its flavors. So, ready to look for the empyreumatic notes of your red wines?
