French noun for taste in all its senses. Some wines, particularly old champagnes, are described as suiting the goût anglais, or English taste (supposedly for wine necrophilia). Sweet champagne was described as to the goût russe, in the days of the imperial court. (The late-19th-century Champenois defined champagne sweetened to satisfy the goût russe as one with 273 to 330 g/l of residual sugar, as opposed to the goût anglais of 22 to 66 g/l.)
A wine made from fruit adversely affected by hail, for example, might be described in French as having a goût de grêle. Another much discussed and loosely applied tasting term is goût de terroir, sometimes used about those aspects of flavour deemed to derive from the terroir rather than the grape variety but sometimes erroneously used synonymously and pejoratively with the term ‘earthy’.
