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Strawberries are certainly one of the most delicious fruit to eat. For lucky people that live in the mountains, there is the wild variety of strawberry, Fragaria Vesca. For everybody else, the rich, bigger cultivated one available in the stores is not bad either. The aroma of strawberry in wine is very important and quite common. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between two main categories of strawberry nuances: fresh strawberry and strawberry jam. These two fragrances are generated by two different compounds. The smell of freshly picked strawberryies derives from ethyl hexanoate; a good odorous reference for strawberry jam or stewed strawberries is Furaneol.

Furaneol

Strawberry nuances are found in a wide varieties of red wines. Fresh strawberry smell is quite common in Rosé wines all over the world, in young Loire Pinot Noirs, Beuajolais, Saumur-Champigny.

Stewed strawberris are a prerogative of more important reds such as  Chambolle-Musigny, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Echezeaux, etc. Sometimes it is possible to find this aroma in some Piedmontese wines such as Barbaresco and even in some Bordeaux and American Merlots and Malbecs.