Wine Between the Lines: Minerality—A Deep Dive Into Rocks in Wine

Join Liz’s Book Bar for an evening of wine and education. This tasting class explores one of the most complicated, and contentious, concepts in wine: minerality.

What do people mean when they say something "smells like flint" or "tastes like chalk"? What do you get when you say you want a wine with "minerality"? And if the wine in our glass is really able to channel the rocks that a vine is grown in — how?

Minerality has a surprisingly short history as a way to describe wine: it first appears as a descriptor in the French wine corpus in the 1980s, and doesn't show up as an entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine until the fourth edition, in 2015. But read wine writing today — or just go into a neighborhood wine store and ask the person behind the counter for something salty and fresh on limestone — and you'll run into it everywhere.

However contemporary the word, the concept it evokes is as old as the idea that a wine can come from a place — that this thing, from here, tastes different that it would if it was grown somewhere else.

Our class is hosted by sommelier James Sligh, founderof the Children's Atlas of Wine, an art and education project that maps the people and places growing wine's futures and puts them in context. Tickets include five tastes of mineral-y wines and an hour and a half class with an interactive component.

Tickets can not be refunded less than a week before the event, and we're unable to exchange your ticket if you are unable to make the class.

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