"sappy" in wine description

C

Chiu Lin

Location
Singapore
When someone describes a wine as "sappy", what does it mean?

I assume it means full of energy or does it mean something else?
 
Last edited:
Chiu, I will concede to using that term from time-to-time, and I use essentially as a substitute for "verve" or "energy" as you describe it. Some might use "lift" or "vibrant" I suppose.
 
Burghound uses the term a lot (as well as "dry extract") in a way that seems very different in meaning to anything "green". It's very much a positive (I think) - but have never been entirely clear on what it meant. My impression was of round, sweet, viscous intensity - but could be way off the track
 
I'm pretty sure that "sappy" is a translation of the French word "sève".
In tasting terms, this means something that is rich, but a particular kind of richness that is hard to put into words.

Burghound also uses the word "spherical", translated from the French. I quite like the word. It's not just a high-falutin way of saying "round". It's a deeper and more meaningful word.

Is "sappy" a commonly-used term in English?


Best regards,
Alex R.
 
Very much use it along the lines suggested by several here: a very positive aspect of wines with energy, good acidity and not too much heaviness - not too much oak, alcohol or extraction. It's about a certain level of green or rather not too ripe fruit, but also a tannin and acid energy and freshness. Sappy wines will always be light to medium bodied and fresh.
 
What an excellent illustration of just how much that is written about wine is literal nonsense, both in the writing and the comprehension. There are already at least four different interpretations!

Energy? One common use of sap means the opposite, as in having your energy sapped, or depleted.

Sappy derived from sap as the noun for plant liquids and used as a synonym for resinous and/or young and green makes more sense. But only just. And I wouldn't necessarily understand it as positive.
 
I don't see a connection between sappy and anything green, but I may be outnumbered here :).

To me, prime examples of sappiness in red wines are, let's say, Pomerol in Bordeaux or Côte Rôtie in the Rhône Valley.
Wines that are rich, but not not in a viscous or thick way (of course, maple syrup is a boiled down concentrate).

Sappiness obviously has to do with the sap in plants or trees.
If grenness were a factor here, why speak of sap rather than any other part of the plant or tree?

Sappiness describes a wine's texture and mouth feel to me more than anything else.
It will be interesting to read other comments because, as has already been remarked, définitions are all over the place.

For instance in my job as a translator, if I see the French description "sève", I translate this is as richness.
How else would you translate it, other than richness, in one word in English please?

Best regards,
Alex R.
 
Too many conflicting ideas here of what 'sappy' is, or may be, I also have no idea what it actually means so have never used it. If I want to say green, or richness or energy, or vibrancy, or dynamism - those words will do just fine. Certainly the first three have nothing to do with each other...

Alex, I tend to divide richness into two possibilities - richness of flavour or richness of texture - I think the two are different.
 
Alex: I've a 'fun' book from 1963 - Lexique de la vigne et du vin, which has translations of 'wine terms' from, and into, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, English and Russian; sève has no equivalent in English (or Russian) in this book, but is translated as 'tasting term applied to the body or richness of a quality wine.'
 
These arguments are always absurd. Words in a tasting note have a context. Arguing about their literal translation, or what the single word in isolation conveys, is pointless. I could pick any one of the words Bill says he does use and apply a Reductio ad Absurdum interpretation of what might convey if I wanted to go down that route.

Does the use of the word 'sappy' really cloud or confuse these tasting notes, or does it add to the overall picture of the wines?

The alcohol is 11.6% in this Syrah, which was 100% whole bunch fermented with very gentle extraction before spending 10 months in older barrels. Attractive bloody and spicy, gamy nose. Such lovely fruit, the cherry and raspberry lift of the fruit and the fabulous spicy, sappy length of the finish.

So fresh, sappy, twigs and bracken, moss and dry redcurrants. The palate has that delicious Gamay or red Vino Verde character, fresh and crunchy, but actually has delicious depth and enough tannin.

Grown organically and at altitude on granite and flint soils, it is unoaked, allowing fresh, lifted, bright cherry and berry fruit aromas to dominate. In the mouth it is savoury and dry, very sappy and herbal, an almost Beaujolais-like freshness and juiciness.
 
It's not a word I use in tasting notes, but in my mind I'd somehow associate it with a raw, green bitterness, and therefore regard it as a pejorative term in almost all reds and many whites.

However, the only tree sap that we consume directly is Maple Syrup (although this is obviously very much concentrated/treated). So I'm wrong, which maybe why I don't use the word myself. Tree sap is resin, which is sweet (although often also bitter when untreated) and becomes amber, so the whole green thing is just plain wrong. Another tree sap whose flavour/smell we are all familiar with is, of course, (natural) rubber - and pinotage tastes of that...

Oak ageing of a wine may impart flavours of vanillin, which comes from the lignin of the tree's cell walls (which presumably taste 'sappy'). In fact most artificial vanilla flavourings are synthesized from tree lignin, so that is a possible further characteristic of a 'sappy' taste.

I get the whole sap as some kind of energy thing - it is the 'blood' of the tree after all - but if a substance has an actual flavour then it cannot be sensible to use it in an analogous context I don't think.
 
I would still argue that 'sappy' is a synonym for 'Beaujolais-like' (see Tom's TNs above) so in order to answer Chiu Lin's question you just have to describe a typical red Beaujolais without resorting to the adjective 'sappy'. Simples.
 
You make a good argument Tom, but I think the very fact there are so many interpretations among such a small and knowledgeable group of wine geeks says that the term is effectively meaningless. Although wine writing would become very dull without some poetic licence.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top