Although it often travels alone in a single bottle, wine is not a solitary creature. When it arrives in your life it links together history, culture, science, and friendships that last a lifetime. Wine educators are asked to remember an excess of wine regulations, fermentation science, and agriculture practices but wine professionals tasked with staying ahead of ever shortening attention spans can be rewarded to remember the stories we share with guests can extend beyond clusters of grapes. The following is a collection of history and facts found in the aromas and flavors of our favorite white wines that will hopefully entertain both wine lovers and the casual wine drinkers alike.

Wine lovers across the world reach for a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc for its refreshing citrus flavors such as grapefruit. This fruit is native to Barbados and the Caribbean Islands where it has had different names in the past, including “the forbidden fruit,” but its current name is most likely the comparison to the Caribbean Seagrape which looks similar to a grape but with an intensely tart sour profile. White and Pink grapefruit varieties were later grown in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and around the early 1930’s natural mutations of red fleshed interiors with a sweeter profile were found here. The “Ruby Red” version was granted a patent, a first for a grapefruit, and was later designated the official state fruit of Texas in 1993.

Examples of Sauvignon Blanc from warmer climates can take on tropical fruit qualities, look for a guava fruit profile in wines made from vintages that experienced heat spikes during the growing season. The fruit is native to Central and South America and was introduced by the Spanish to the Philippines during the 17th century. Here they have an interesting folklore regarding the fruit that begins with a wealthy King named Barabas who was cruel and lavish while his people lived in poverty. An old starving woman approached the King for charity and upon being denied cursed the King for his wickedness. Shortly after this encounter Barabas began to rapidly lose weight and appeared frail, dying shortly with no one from the town attending the funeral. From the spot where he was buried a plant that the natives did not recognize grew into a tree and bore yellow fruits with a crown and subtle sour taste. This reminded the townspeople of the neglectful King and the fruit soon became known as bayabas. Today guava is found in beverages, songs by Bob Marley, and even the wood is used in carpentry and BBQ pits.

This intensely fragrant wine is the welcome mat for many first-time wine lovers. One of the major intoxicating aromas in this floral bouquet of a wine is the perfumed lychee fruit, a symbol of romance and beauty in China and estimated to have its origins in Southeast Asia where some trees are more than a thousand years old. An Emperor of the Tang dynasty would have it transported by horseback relay around 600 miles to the northern capital just for his favorite concubine to have the freshest fruit available. The fruit has two common phrasings, both correct and determined by different countries. Pronunciations of ‘Lye-che’ was picked up by the British through exposure to Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, while many Americans pronounce ‘lee-chi’ through contact with Chinese immigrants who sold the fruit in grocery stores and restaurants.

An anthophile may notice the familiar scent of rose petals that grace this particular wine in abundance. The rose has a long history of being planted alongside grapevines for vineyard managers to look for early signs of downy or powdery mildew. In addition to attracting vineyard pests like aphids away from the vines the thorny rose bushes at each row end would ensure work horses or oxen would make a wide turn and not damage any vines before entering the next row. In olden times to accommodate illiterate vineyard workers the different colored roses allowed managers to give work orders by vineyard blocks or rows. While most species of rose are native to Asia, there are a few that naturally call North America home, like the Nootka Rose which grows in western Sonoma. This rose was used by Native Americans as medicine for sore throats and to ease labor pains.

Few wines offer the complexity that Riesling is capable of. An energetic tart lime can be found within Australian Rieslings similar to the flavors found in the Finger Lime which is native to the tropical areas of Queensland Australia. This unique citrus has a slender finger appearance with an interior of tiny sour spheres resembling caviar that indigenous Australians have been using as a source of food and topical antiseptic for centuries. Today you can find these limes in Michelin restaurants and specialty grocery stores.

White flowers are a common descriptor in Riesling wines, including Jasmine whose aroma actually grows in strength at night. The cooler temperature allows its flowers to open, revealing aromatic blooms of star shaped petals which produced the name “Queen of the night” in India due to its powerful scent after sunset. When blind tasting, wine professionals are assisted in identify Riesling due to its hints of honey. Humans have been seeking out the sugar high it provides since our beginnings, moving on from robbing bee hives to bee cultivation around 3,000 BCE in Egypt. Its quick source of energy has long been prized and in medieval Germany it was even an accepted source of tax payment from peasants to their feudal lords. According to The Honey Association, it takes a colony of bees gathering pollen from around 2 million flowers to produce a single pound of honey.

One of the most frequented terms in the wine lexicon is stone fruits, used to describe the wide range of pitted fruits found in wines from Albariño to Viognier. Also known by drupe, their official botany name, which define fruits that have a fleshy outside and an interior pit or “stone” inside which contain a seed. Most stone fruits originate from central and western Asia where they intertwine with history and culture. In China the peach has been cultivated since 8 thousand years ago. Here there is a mythology tale where the Jade Emperor holds a peach banquet at his palace in heaven for notable monks, gods and goddesses. His wife, the Queen Mother of the West, sends servants to collect The Peaches of Immortality from her orchard which come in three varieties that grant wisdom, a youthful appearance, and the ability to live eternally alongside the Sun and Moon. While peach trees only live for 10 to 20 years other stone fruits such as the apricot and mango can live to an impressive 150 and 300 years long, living up to the mythology of these fruits and association with long life.

Aside from fragrant stone fruits, Albariño and Viognier can also share an aroma of honeysuckle, named for the sweet nectar found within its tubular flowers. This sugary scent is strongest at night and attracts a variety of insects that feed larger predators from bats to birds. For human consumption many species of honeysuckle berries are toxic, with symptoms ranging from nausea to an irregular heartbeat, but can be an important food source for native birds. Across the Midwest invasive non-native honeysuckle has increased, featuring berries higher in pigment promoting carotenoids but lower in quality fat and protein. These foreign berries promote a deeper red feather color in Cardinal birds but offer very little nutritional value compared to native options.

In certain conditions stone fruits have a dark side, turning from life sustaining to toxic. Drupes such as the peach, apricot, cherry, and plum contain small amounts of a chemical compound amygdalin which is converted into cyanide in the body when the pit has been crushed and consumed. This is a rare occurrence though as these tough pits would have to be broken open to be exposed. In 2014 a series of mysterious convulsions and deaths occurred in groups of children who performed seasonal lychee harvests in India and Vietnam. At first a possible link to pesticides were blamed but when a common thread of low blood sugars emerged between all the victims, investigators began to examine the fruit itself. Malnourished children who worked harvests would binge eat the fruit which was cheap and plentiful. It was determined that these children aged between 1 and 9 ate around 30 to 100 individual lychee fruit which contains an amino acid when unripe named Hypoglycin that inhibits the body from producing glucose. Since these children were famished with already low blood sugar the combination of the effects of the underripe lychee produced disastrous results.