Have you ever heard of a wine having a leather wine tasting note? It seems like a weird thing to find in your glass, particularly because it isn’t something you would normally eat. But this wine tasting note can actually really add complexity to a wine, and isn’t a bad thing in the slightest!
In Wine Terms Explained, we dive into weird wine terms and unpack what they mean. Wine can be really hard to learn, and with so many weird wine terms to figure out, it can be even more difficult. So Wine Terms Explained aims to get you the knowledge you need about these terms easily so that you can get back to enjoying wine.
So let’s dive into the leather wine tasting note: What it is, why it exists and where you might find it.
What is leather in wine?
A leather wine tasting note is often paired with notes of vanilla, toast and cedar. It’s a savoury note that you’ll often find in a wine that has muted primary fruit characteristics that come from the grapes themselves. There are some that believe that leather is more of a texture from tannins than an aroma. But in this article, we’re focusing on the aroma and flavour of leather, rather than the mouthfeel. In this case, leather is a tertiary or primary aroma that comes from winemaking and ageing (learn more about aroma here).
What creates the leather wine tasting note?
So now that we know what we’re looking for, what causes leather in wine? The answer is oak and ageing. Wines in oak get the benefit of added complexity and depth in their flavours beyond the primary fruit characteristics of the grape. They may have leather notes in them when first released, but these will intensify as the wine ages. As a wine get’s older, the fruit notes become muted and those secondary and tertiary aromas come to the front. This is where you get notes of chocolate, vanilla, tobacco, smoke and leather. Learn more about the influence of oak here.
Where you’ll find the leather wine tasting note
So where might you find the leather wine tasting note? You will be most likely to see this note in red wines that are aged in oak. Fruity wines that are aged in stainless steel won’t have these aromas. And the older the wine gets, the more likely it will be to have notes such as leather.
You can find leather in most red wine if the winemaker has chosen to bring this note into the wine. However, some good places to look are older Australian Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, aged Bordeaux and Rioja.