Wine experts just love cats

Have you ever seen wine experts swishing wine around their mouths? Strawberries, elderflower, apples, and asparagus are just some of the terms they use to describe the wine’s flavour. But let’s not forget... cat’s pee! A team of researchers in New Zealand have been studying the country’s most popular wine, sauvignon blanc, for over six years to find out more about its character. And the strangest flavour they found was cat’s pee! This doesn’t mean the wine actually contains urine! It’s just a flavour that wine experts recognise. “We are only talking about very tiny amounts of the flavour that make the wine more complex and interesting,” said Sue Blackmore, a wine expert at New Zealand’s Lincoln University. “It’s amazing what a little of this flavour can do.” One winery is not ashamed of the findings – and is even advertising that its savignon blanc includes this rather unusual flavour!