Why does my wine smell like strawberry?

It arrives mid-sip: a ghost of jam, a whisper of summer. You didn't add fruit. So why does your wine smell like strawberry?

The short answer: grapes and yeast make some of the same aroma compounds that strawberries do. Certain grapes, and certain ways of making wine, bring them to the front. Nothing is added. Wine remembers, and some grapes were born with berry in their bones.

The berry-born grapes

• Gamay: the strawberry grape. In Beaujolais, whole bunches are often fermented with little or no crushing (carbonic or semi-carbonic maceration), and that pushes the red fruit right to the front.
• Pinot Noir: fresh-picked strawberry in cooler places such as Burgundy, Oregon and New Zealand; riper and jammier where it's warmer.
• Grenache (Garnacha): stewed strawberry or strawberry sweets, from the southern Rhône to Spain. It's behind many pale, pretty rosés too.
• Tempranillo: in young Rioja, strawberry and red cherry sit next to the vanilla of oak.
• Zinfandel: ripe, jammy strawberry, close to pie filling, especially from warm parts of California.
• Sangiovese: mostly cherry, but young, unoaked styles can let a little strawberry peek through.

The chemistry, in plain words

You're not imagining it. A few molecules do most of the work:

• Ethyl cinnamate: an ester that smells of strawberry and a little cinnamon. Studies find more of it in wines made by carbonic maceration, which is part of why Beaujolais can smell like a fruit basket.
• Fruity esters: yeast makes many of them during fermentation. Cooler, gentler fermentations keep more of them in the wine.
• Furaneol: sometimes called strawberry furanone. A little smells of ripe strawberry; more of it leans to caramel.
• β-damascenone: it doesn't smell of strawberry on its own, but it makes red-fruit aromas seem louder. Background magic.

Winemakers can turn the volume up or down: whole-bunch fermentation, gentle extraction and little or no new oak all keep the fruit bright. Less recipe, more rhythm.

What kind of strawberry?

Try this at home

• Cut a fresh strawberry. Sip a Beaujolais. Notice the echo.
• Chill a Grenache-based rosé. Close your eyes. Strawberry meets watermelon: a summer postcard.
• Pour a Zinfandel. Smell the jam and the pie crust. Childhood in a glass.

Then say what you smell out loud. Naming an aroma is how your nose remembers it next time.

Train your nose

Strawberry is just one word in a sommelier's aroma vocabulary. My SOMM DIGI Wine Aroma Flashcards put 100+ aromas on visual cards, non-scented on purpose: you learn each one by linking a picture, a word and the wines where it shows up, the way sommeliers build sensory memory. For a whole grape full of red fruit, read Pinot Noir, explained.

Questions people ask