Wine Must

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Wine must is freshly crushed grapes before fermentation starts. It smells of grape juice and crushed skins, cut by the green astringency of stem tannin. There is a faint yeasty edge from wild yeast on the grape surface, but no alcohol. It is sweeter, fruitier and greener than any finished wine.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads as crushed grape juice, and the source puts it first every time: 'Sweet crushed grape', 'raw fruit, crushed skins', 'all the fruit, none of the spirit'. The sweetness is inside the fruit rather than beside it, so sweet_vanillic stays on the source's own wording that 'the sweetness is fruit-natural, not sugar-processed'. Green is the second axis and it is what makes this note different from a wine note: stem tannin, named twice as a 'green-astringent quality' and as 'vegetal-green'. Sour covers the tannin astringency, 'a slightly bitter edge', and the faint wild-yeast bloom that signals fermentation is starting. Below, boozy is held because the source states the absence outright, and earthy for the 'more raw and agricultural' character of the press floor.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Fruity, Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Must is the pulp, juice, skins, seeds and stems that come out of the press at harvest. The name covers the state, not a species, and 'grape must' and 'wine must' are the same material. The aroma is raw grape volatiles plus the green, bitter compounds that stems and seeds contribute. The classes that define finished wine come later: esters, volatile phenols and sulphur compounds are all produced by yeast enzymes during fermentation, which must precedes. In perfumery it is a compounded accord built from grape materials, green-tannic modifiers and a trace of yeast.

Usage in Perfumery

Used to give a fruit accord an agricultural, just-picked reading rather than a cellar one. It suits harvest and vineyard themes where a wine note would read as too finished or too boozy. It sits with grape, fig leaf, green stem materials and damp earth. Perfumers use it as a heart accent, not a base.