Glossary
Minerality
A description of wines that suggest wet stone, flint, chalk or salt. It is one of the most contested terms in wine: the sensation is real and widely reported, but the popular explanation — that the vine transmits minerals from the soil into the wine — is not supported by evidence.
In more detail
Vines do take up minerals, but in quantities far too small to taste, and not in forms that would produce these aromas.
WineHQ uses the word descriptively, because readers use it, while declining to endorse the soil-transfer explanation.