Salt in wine
Edible rock, once worth its weight in gold
There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.
I would add, it’s also in wine.
A last-minute invite, a desperate need to swim in the sea, and a wine-walk week as calm as the Sargasso Sea has brought me to Pornichet, right next to the salt marshes of Guérande. As those who know me will testify, I have been using ‘sel de Guérande’ for all my salt needs for many, many years. During a course on Taste I taught at Sciences Po in Paris, we had a salt tasting to see which salt tasted best. In addition to sel de Guérande, the other salts included in the tasting were a rough Scottish salt flavoured with pine resin, salt I had collected from tidal pools near Saint Tropez on the Mediterranean, salt from the Camargue, pink Himalayan salt, Malden salt, a pink volcanic salt from Iceland, industrial ‘sel de mer’, and regular iodised industrial salt.
The rough grey sea salt of Guérande was by far favoured by the majority. The reason for this is that it is a natural, unrefined product and probably the least ‘pure’, containing roughly 16% oligo-minerals and 84% sodium chloride (the same proportion of sodium in the blood stream). Sodium, by the way is not the same as salt (which is sodium chloride), and is an energy carrier. It is also responsible for sending messages from the brain to muscles through the nervous system so that muscles move on command. Unrefined sea salt supplies all 92 vital trace minerals, thereby promoting optimum biological function and cellular maintenance. These include magnesium, calcium, iron, bromine, sulphur, iodine, vanadium, silicon, phosphorous, and a broad range of trace elements - micro-organisms that live in the sea and which add flavour, as well as health-giving properties, to the salt.
The salt marshes of Guérande are easily accessible from Pornichet via La Baule and I rode a bike there in under an hour. It was a day of intermittent sun and cloud that ended in clear blue skies and a swim after my visit to the salt marshes in the sea along the vast, uninterrupted sandy beach that connects Pornichet and La Baule (the longest continuous stretch of sandy beach in Europe at 9 kilometres).
I rode there and back past the faded glories of another era in the form of stately manor houses, casinos, and a plethora of posh hotels that have been overshadowed by modern apartment buildings. A very urban string of shops with crowds of people confirm its reputation as the Côte d’Azur of Brittany. Very built up with nary a hint of nature, other than the endless beach and the sailboat dotted, Atlantic Ocean.
The transition from urban dwelling to an inland aquatic eco-system couldn’t be more abrupt. Buildings stop and fields with overgrown embankments reveal the salt marshes. The business of harvesting salt from the marshes around Guérande has been going on for over 1000 years, explained Jerome Tilleul, who I happened to bump into on my ride. He was managing a number of sluice gates in one of 8 salt marshes he owns that let seawater into the various drying ponds. He told me in great detail how everything works, but lost me with arcane terminology and techniques that I think would be better understood in the doing than in the listening. But one thing I did understand is that he thinks it’s the best salt in the world, and was pleased to hear me say so as well.
Salt has a very long history and as mentioned in the subtitle, was once worth its weight in gold. The word ‘salary’ is derived from the Latin ‘salarium’, the monthly allowance Roman soldiers were allotted, which was sometimes paid in salt (‘sal’ being the Latin word for salt). This Latin root can be recognised in the French word ‘salaire’ — and it eventually made it into the English language as the word ‘salary’.
In the meanwhile, you can read extensively about the Guérande salt marshes on the La Baule Presqu’Île de Guérande website.
All of this preamble is really just a pretext to talk about salt in wine, which is probably the last thing we think of when we think of wine. In fact, most people never think of salt when they think of wine, and even fewer would consciously add salt to wine. (Or would they…?) And yet salt, or the impression of saltiness or salinity is present in a very broad range of wines. In terms of taste, salt is one of the elements (sweet, bitter, salt, acid) we identify with the greatest ease. But what gives us the impression of salinity in tasting wine is more complex than the physical presence of salts, which come in various forms in wine.
Some years ago I visited Thierry Michon on his Domain Saint Nicolas in Brem sur Mer in the appellation the Fiefs Vendéens (about 100 kilometres south of where I am currently in Pornichet). As we toured the vineyard, he stopped by rows that were sparsely planted with great gaps between the vines. He asked me if I could guess why there were such distances between the vines. The soil was sandy and we were very close to the sea, so I guessed it had something to do with the soil and the sea. He confirmed my suspicions and said the soil here was so salty in places, vines wouldn’t grow. Consequently, the salinity in some of his wines is very high, which is most often associated with ‘minerality’.
It makes sense that wines produced close to the sea will have higher levels of salinity than wines produced inland, but the presence of salt doesn’t exactly make the wine taste salty. According to an extensive article on salt in wine I found on the website of SevenFifty Daily:
“Though it may be easy to measure the concentration of salts, acids, or sugars in a wine, those chemical measurements do not directly correlate to how we actually experience them—each taste affects the perceived intensity of the others. Salinity increases our perception of sweetness, but reduces the perception of acid. Sweetness reduces the perception of both salinity and acidity, and acidity boosts the perception of both sweetness and salinity. So, a high salt content in a wine doesn’t just make that wine salty, but makes us perceive it as both sweeter and less acidic than it is.”
To complicate matters further, saltiness or the perception of salinity in wine can be produced by other compounds:
“…there is a secondary mechanism that responds to other ions, including potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and magnesium, which will contribute a salty taste.”
Soils with high salt content aren’t the only way salt taste will occur in wine. Coastal vineyards absorb salts from wind and rains through their leaves, increasing salinity in the wine. Rootstocks also have an impact in regulating salt content as some are better at absorbing (or blocking) salts than others. Clearing land of trees can also increase salt content in soil as removing trees has the effect of raising the water table, bringing salts closer to the surface.
In ancient Greece and Rome, adding salt to wine was a common practice. Salt served as a preservative, helping to prolong the life of the wine by inhibiting the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms. Salt was also used to enhance the flavour of wine, making it more palatable. The salting of wine was part of the broader practice of mixing and flavouring wines with various substances, including honey, spices, and herbs.
During the Middle Ages, salted wine was often used for medicinal purposes. It was believed to have healing properties and was used in various remedies and treatments.
All in all, there is a very long history of salt in wine and today there is a new trend among a certain crowd of adding salt to wine to improve flavour. The website delicious.com claims that, “A little salt in your wine helps to broaden its flavour profile, enhancing the sweet notes, reducing the bitter notes and providing a rounded depth that some wines may lack.” How a pinch of salt can do all that and what wines these are I fear to ask, but it seems the trend is most often associated with cheap wines.
Tampering with what you have in your glass goes counter to what one expects of a wine, especially when the art of wine making in the hands of capable winemakers is intended to produce a finished product to be drunk as is. But each to their own I suppose, and for salt lovers, there’s never ever enough. Just so long as they’re adding ‘sel de Guérande’ I might give it a go…
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Not only did the ancient Greeks add salt to their wines, they diluted them with sea water, with contemporary recommendations to collect the water far from the local harbour to ensure its purity. Not sure how that would go down in a modern tasting!
Wonderful (and complex!). Appreciated!