Ep. 2526 How Can a Liquid Taste Like Stone? | The Art of Wine Storytelling with Ryan Robinson

Here's a simple memory map you can run with any winery or by the glass feature. So we start off with then. Name one historical practice that defined identity, say, extended lees aging in large neutral wood to protect delicacy. Then we look at the now. So we name the modern analog that chases the same value, perhaps larger formats, ceramic or careful inert gas management to keep texture without over oak. And then we have the because where we name the enduring value, purity, longevity, a signature mouthfill. When you present tradition as values over vessels, guests understand how places stay themselves while tools evolve. Welcome to a special series on the Italian wine podcast. In this series, Italian wine ambassador, Ryan Robinson, reads and reflects on the art of wine storytelling, the latest book by renowned scholar, Professor Atelio Scienza. From the myths of ancient Greece to the language of modern wine communication, the book explores how storytelling shapes our understanding of wine, and why these stories matter more now than ever. Let's begin the journey. Have you ever tasted wet slate in a Mosel Riesling or gunflint in Chablis, and wondered how a liquid can taste like stone? Today, we'll go beyond the buzzwords. We'll explore why your brain can hear acidity, how stories really do change flavor, and why tradition is memory with an editor. This is episode five of Art of Wine Storytelling, Minerality, Myth, and Memory. I'm Ryan Robinson, and this series translates Atelier Schenza's Art of Wine Storytelling into Tools You Can Use in Tastings, Trainings, and even more important, into Cells. In chapters 13 through 15, Shenzhen connects three slippery ideas, synesthesia and the minerality of wine, the magic and responsibility of myth, and the ways tradition reconstructs memory over time. Here's the promise. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to define minerality without hand waving, use myth to make meaning without distorting reality, and frame tradition as a living practice that preserves values even as methods change. Let's start with the sense puzzle that launched a thousand tasting notes. Synesthesia and the minerality of wine, A taste of the past. The term minerality, a sensory descriptor increasingly used in the Anglo Saxon press, associates this characteristics with high quality, originality, and authenticity, especially for white wines produced in northern regions. A sort of sense of place that evokes the relationship between the chemical composition of the soil and the wine. For some, it is a distinctive feature of some French wines such as Sancerre, Loire, or Chablise. It is linked to certain grape varieties such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon, or Chenin Blanc. The Italian wines that best identify with this characteristic are Timoroso, Lugana, Greco di Tufo, Caracante de laetna, and some aged Verdictios. It is not easy to describe the sensory sensation it arouses as it has a multisensory and multimodal origin that combines smell, taste, and trezminal reactions. A saline minerality is distinguished from a bitter minerality. It is described as aromatic notes of flint, dry stone, musk, graphite, fresh oysters, smoky, and kerosene or petroleum in aged wines. The research remains highly skeptical about the fanciful hypothesis of a relationship between minerals present in the soil and the characteristics of the wine. And instead, attributes these sensory notes to some sulfur compounds, thiols, present in reduced form, linked to the grape variety and the ripening conditions of the grapes. In fact, benzymetal gives this infuromatic dimension to a wine very similar to the note of flint. Taste sensations are the result of heterosensory stimuli located in different parts of the mouth that transform chemical messages into electrical messages. Acidity receptors, ion channels, and membrane receptors. All taste cells have receptors of these three categories that interact with each other. So it is therefore illusory to think that there are specific areas of the mouth for mineral flavor. The taste senses are neither analytical nor synthetic, only discriminatory and can make the difference. For example, between tartaric acid that evokes hardness and succinic acid that gives a salty or bitter sensation. Why then is the attribute minerality so effective in communication? Perhaps because it recalls an almost physical relationship with a place. It satisfies that search for origins, the nostalgia for youthful memories, for holidays in the countryside. This accompanies that mutation of taste that rejects concentrated woody wines produced in a consumerist economic context with aggressive marketing strategies and turns instead to more balanced products coming from more natural terroirs that are able to reveal this minerality by virtue of a more eco sustainable viticulture. The perception of minerality then, beyond a certain balance between flavor and aromatic notes, is not the imperfect reflection of a soil, but a mental representation that designates with a noun a strong evocative power. The minerality of a wine can become a synesthetic stimulus because it brings to mind the naturalness of the place and the memory of childhood. The magic of the story, the relevance of the myth. In the Italian wine growing landscape, it is still possible to encounter the reality of the myth. That's where the Cleothean primordial duality comes in. Chthon means earth in Greek, a term found in the word Alphochthonus, which means native to that land. In Greek mythology, Phokthon, deities, Gaia Hades and Demeter are distinguished from primordial deities, creators of the Earth, such as Uranus, Zeus, and Athena. What is their relationship with wine in the landscape? There is no doubt that a red wine with structure produced in a harsh landscape like Valtilina or sunny Calabria is the chthonian, a product of the earth with deep roots preserved in the earth, in the depths of the cellar, in an amphora made of terracotta. The ancient Greeks poured the first drops of wine on the ground in a ritual of the libation of the symposium to appease the Chthonium deities. A sparkling wine such as Prosecco, for example, produced on gentle hills with romantic connotations of Aldebadiani as a primordial characteristic, does not age in the cellar, is exposed to light with its clear bottles, is the wine of open air parties, testifies to the beauty of the landscapes, and is certainly more suitable for modern sociocultural practices. There's also another duality. The Dionysian Apollyon Dionysus is the god of wine, of excess who drinks pure wine, for this reason called Acrophorus. As he does not pour the wine into the crater or dilution with water, as was the symposium custom. He identifies the wine as fleshy, strong, alcoholic, structured, and once again, the protagonist is the wild landscape with wooded and rocky connotations. On the other hand, we have the wine of temperance, of spiritual evolation, of the Greek banquet, which was not drunken, gathering, but a moment of discussion, narration, song. Who then is the character who must be invoked? Without any doubt, Apollo, Theubis, the dispenser of light, who represents the pleasure of drinking as a moment for the spirit, not only for the flesh or for intoxication. Tradition and the reconstruction of memory. It is not the generous Loki, the spirit of a place that animates a wine growing territory, but the generous saukuli, the spirit of the time, which allows us to narrate and think. The landscape is then a constructed space where the spirit of a place is not only to be found in the contemplative symbolism of the founding fathers and in the divinities that protect them, but must also be evaluated with the eye of positivism where the work of the homo faber, the working man, admirably integrates the natural attributes of a place. Neuromarketing, which is based on the development of cognitive sciences, uses storytelling to activate a process of synesthesia thr