buttery finish

[kayt75]

I've only heard white wines be described as having a buttery finish, but I swear I had a very buttery red wine not too long ago. Does anyone know of any reds that have the buttery quality??

[Innkeeper]

Hi Kay, and welcome to the Wine Board. It is the provence of white wine that has been liberally maloed and oaked.

[winoweenie]

Hi Kayt and welcome. What you have had was an older red wine that had shed most of its' tannins there-by giving it a lusher mouthfeel. WW

[Bucko]

Malolactic fermentation can give a wine a buttery taste, as well as softer acidity, which is not always a good thing. I cannot say that I ever tasted butter in a red wine but certainly in many whites.

[Thomas]

Sorry guys, but you are all wrong. Many red wines go through malo-lactic fermentation. We don't recognize it so easily as we do with whites because of the tannins in red hiding the butter (and also because of the heavy hand with ml in California Chardonnay). Just the other night, when Scoop, RAD and I tasted that Barbera from U of Fresno that ww sent, I detected butter right away. RAD said he thought he did too.

[Bucko]

Most reds go through MLF. As I stated, I cannot remember detecting a buttery red. Whites without all of the tannins and heavy fruit show their buttery taste more easily, esppecially Chardonnay.

[Thomas]

Sorry Bucko, missed your reference completely. In the case of reds, it is probably worse when you can detect the butter than it is in whites, since that means the tannins are too low to help age the wine.

[RAD]

I've tasted the butteriness of malolactic fermentation in several red wines, though I cannot recall any specifically except for the barbera in question that foodie mentioned.

And kayt75, that butteriness comes from a chemical called diacetyl, which, if memory serves, is exactly the same chemical that gives butter it's "buttery" smell.

RAD

[Randy Caparoso]

I agree that "buttery" tastes are often found in reds -- especially warm climate (including Napa Valley) Cabernets from California. I also remember quite a number of old style California Barberas (especially Sebastiani's) having a touch of butter in the nose and flavor.

But it's funny, even though California Chardonnays that undergo malolactic fermentation are associated with "buttery" tastes, nowadays it's quite rare to find Chardonnays that actually smell or taste like the stuff Fabio likes so much. At the most, "creamy" aromas and textures have become par.

The reason for this is because battonage (stirring of the lees, or spent yeast cells) or at least lees contact during barrel aging has long become standard practice, going hand in hand with malolactic regimes. Lees contact has proven quite effective in absorbing most of the perceptible diacetyl resulting from the conversion of malic to lactic acids. This is why Chardonnay based wines in Burgundy, for instance, almost never taste "buttery" either. For the French, malolactic/battonage methodology is as basic as ABC.

[This message has been edited by Randy Caparoso (edited 04-06-2002).]