A sommelier explains how ‘barnyard’ can be an attractive aroma in wine

Sommelier Sara Lehman tasted 11 wines from big-box stores like Target, BJ’s, and Costco.
When she tried BJ’s Wellsley Farms pinot grigio, she used the word "barnyard" to describe the aroma.
Lehman said barnyard can be an attractive quality in wine. Watch the video above to find out what the term means.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

I’m getting some barnyard right in the nose, and I know that sounds like a weird quality to have, but barnyard is definitely an aroma in wine.

When you smell barnyard, it’s almost like it’s an earthiness that’s as if you were to walk into, say, a horse barn, you know, like a clean one, and you were to, say, just get that smell of fresh hay. And I like to say barnyardiness because a lot of times I’ll be tasting with individuals, and maybe they’ve been around farms or whatnot, you just walk in and you instantly get that aroma. And so if you were to say you don’t like the word barnyard or, say, you don’t connect well with that word, hay would be a definitely, like fresh-cut hay, in the suburbs, you get a lot of that.

On the palate, you will not taste a barnyard. You will not be drinking hay.

Hmm, yeah. Yellow apple, hay, it’s got acidity, got some lime in there. I think that the barnyardiness right up front along with a lot of like this yellow apple, definitely gives it some complexity.

It can be a very attractive quality in a wine, and I think in the pinot grigio, this is actually very attractive about it, and to someone like myself who drinks a lot of wine and tastes a lot, that’s a complexity factor that I would look for and be really intrigued to taste it.