Berries with a hint of tarmac – what do we mean when we call a wine ‘fruity’?

Bananas, peaches, strawberries – anything but ‘grapes’. What do all those volatile organic compounds really mean for your summer sipping?

“Strawberries, cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring,” sang Nancy Sinatra. “My summer wine is really made from all these things …” Overlook the angel’s kiss and, if you’re a wine drinker, you might recognise some of those fruity tasting notes – strawberries and cherries, indeed, but also citrus, orchard, other stone fruits and the whole berry family. In fact, it’s common to liken a wine to almost any fruit – except grapes.

A wine can have notes of almost anything – pencil shavings, tennis balls, cat pee – but fruit is the most obvious (clearly, wine is made from fruit) and universally recognised. If I told you I was getting, say, green apple and lime zest from a riesling, you would probably have a good sense of what that meant, and what you might be able to expect on tasting it yourself. If I described a petroleum aroma, that might sound a bit cryptic and much less appealing, unless you were familiar with this tasting note commonly found in riesling. In other words, a wine’s fruit profile is often leveraged as a marketing tool. What better example of this than the “strawberries and cream” of Provence rosé? It’s a tasting note that underpins our collective sense that rosé is a summer drop, perfect for sun-drenched days filled with watching tennis, ocean views and seasonal produce.

But that probably sounds more cynical than I intended. Fruit notes in wine are very much a real thing. When we talk about a wine having notes of tart cherry or candied orange, we’re describing what we find in its aroma – smell being, of course, a factor in how we taste. Wines contain aromatic compounds that are similar to or the same as those found in other fruits – for example, esters (made by yeasts during fermentation, bringing notes of banana, pear, pineapple), or compounds originating in grapes, including thiols (tropical fruit), norisoprenoids (dried fruit and honeyed notes) and terpenes (citrus and floral aromas).

To deconstruct a wine in this way can feel pedantic – a wine is so much more than a collection of aromatic compounds, after all. Something of its magic lies in Sinatra’s ineffable “angel’s kiss in spring” – often, I find, this is the time or place in which you drink it, or the people with whom you do so – but today’s picks showcase some of the different fruit aromas you might find in grapes, styles and regions, from the apricots and orange blossom of the moscatel and torrontes blend from southern Chile to a simple, peachy Roussillon orange, to the damsons and dark cherries of a Georgian saperavi. Your summer wine really can have aromas of all these things.

Six fruity little numbers to splash out on

Pipeño Blanco 2024, A Los Vinateros Bravos £20.90 Monty Wines, 12.5%. Apricot, peach and citrus peel in this skin-contact white made from aromatic, old bush vines in Chile.

W/O Organic Nero d’Avola Rosato 2024 £14.99Laithwaites, 12%. You’ll find all the summer berries in this volcanic and organic Sicilian rosé from Etna.

Cote Mas Orange £10.25 Waitrose, 13%. Any orange notes in this orange wine are zesty and a little cooked; a peachy introduction to the genre.

M&S Found Saperavi £12 Ocado, 13%. Saperavi means “dyed” – its skins bring deep colour and rich, grippy dark red fruit aromas. Great for a barbecue.

Alain Grignon Reserve Carignan Vieilles Vignes 2023/24 £12.50, Majestic, 12.5%. A spicy, old vine carignan with lots of cherry and dried cranberry – a proper bargain crowdpleaser.

Flavia Catarratto Zibibbo £33 Ocado, 12.5%. A delicious, tropical fruit bomb from Sicily – expect pineapple and grapefruit. I almost wanted a cocktail umbrella.