Minerality in Wine: Textual Analysis of Chablis Premier Cru Tasting Notes

Table 1

Median, interquartile range (IQR), and linear trend in word groups used to describe Chablis Premier Cru wine in CellarTracker tasting notes against vintage (1999 to 2019) and tasting year (2005 to 2022). Word groups in bold exhibited linear trends that were significant at the p < 0.05 level with Bonferroni correction, i.e., (0.05/14). The word group indices range in value from 0 (zero presence) to 1 (found in 100% of all tasting notes); thus, a slope of 0.01 is effectively a 1% increase per year of the word group in absolute terms. All wines were between 3 and 7 years of age when tasted.

	Vintage (1999 to 2019)						Tasting year (2005 to 2022)
	Median	IQR	Slope	SE			Median	IQR	Slope	SE
Acidity	0.33	0.04	0.0053	0.0013	0.45	<0.001	0.35	0.05	0.0023	0.0014	0.14	0.129
Citrus	0.42	0.05	0.0043	0.0018	0.22	0.030	0.43	0.04	0.0030	0.0013	0.26	0.031
Floral	0.11	0.04	0.0026	0.0008	0.37	0.003	0.11	0.02	0.0019	0.0006	0.40	0.005
Lees	0.04	0.01	−0.0005	0.0005	0.04	0.364	0.04	0.01	−0.0005	0.0005	0.05	0.394
Minerality	0.36	0.07	−0.0070	0.0010	0.70	<0.001	0.38	0.07	−0.0087	0.0011	0.79	<0.001
MLF	0.14	0.04	−0.0011	0.0013	0.04	0.404	0.13	0.02	−0.0002	0.0009	0.00	0.800
Oak	0.11	0.03	−0.0026	0.0011	0.23	0.028	0.12	0.02	−0.0014	0.0006	0.29	0.021
Orchard fruit	0.18	0.06	0.0060	0.0010	0.63	<0.001	0.18	0.02	0.0039	0.0009	0.55	<0.001
Reduction^a	0.04	0.01	0.0006	0.0005	0.07	0.260	0.05	0.02	0.0018	0.0004	0.57	< 0.001
Salinity	0.14	0.06	0.0077	0.0014	0.62	<0.001	0.16	0.07	0.0095	0.0014	0.75	< 0.001
Shellfish	0.08	0.03	−0.0006	0.0007	0.04	0.360	0.09	0.02	0.0000	0.0007	0.00	0.957
Stone fruit	0.06	0.05	0.0047	0.0006	0.79	<0.001	0.06	0.03	0.0040	0.0005	0.78	< 0.001
Stony^a	0.21	0.03	−0.0001	0.0016	0.00	0.940	0.20	0.02	0.0001	0.0007	0.00	0.851
Tropical fruit	0.09	0.03	−0.0003	0.0010	0.00	0.795	0.08	0.02	0.0005	0.0007	0.04	0.453

^aIn this study, “gunflint” words were included in the reduction word group and “flint” words in the stony word group. Flint, however, may be used in tasting notes as shorthand for gunflint and could thus be considered a reductive or smoky characteristic rather than stony. Simulation of this alternative categorisation for flint showed that it had little material effect on the results (Supplementary Figure S6, Tables S4 and S5).