· As haunting as a cello solo by Yo-Yo Ma
· Baby Jesus in velvet pants going down your gullet
· Chanel No 5 on a gladiator’s shorts
· Enormous coarse bubbles as though a hippo farted in the fermentation tank
· Gefilte fish
· Hawaiian volcanic ash-tinged notes of duck’s breath
· It’ll put new lead in any geriatric’s pencil
· Just don’t drink it, paint with it
· Liqueur of lead pencils
· Not as pretty as the proprietor’s wife
· Pinot Grigio with a brain
· Robitussin or Dimetane, with skunk on the finish
· Smoky bacon [in this kosher wine]
· So far past its sell-by date that whoever stamped it is long dead
· Strumpet of a wine with tawdry cherry and plum flavors and a tart mouth
· Tomcat, gooseberries and cardboard
· Urine during asparagus season
· Vin de merde
· What angels use as an underarm deodorant
· Wonderfully grouchy
· Yak drool
· Zen-like
--Bernard Klem: Author’s ‘Favorites’ in WineSpeak: A vinous thesaurus of (gasp!) 36,975 winetasting descriptors. 2009
What prompted the above short-list of inanity and verbal-vinous abuse? I commenced culling through my office bookshelves (organized chaos!) packing up a large chunk of my wine library books and others, in the interest of tidying up the office and trying to make room for all of the books still amassed on the floor (see photo below- this is just one section of shelves!). In doing so, I came upon the book quoted above, purchased 15 years ago, ignored on the shelf for probably too long as well, and opening it, literally broke up laughing out loud at some of these wonderful, horrible, gross, mean-ingless actual comments about our favorite tipple. If you can find this book, get it! Your day will get brighter, and you will gain a lot fun vocabulary at the very least.
The selections above are just a few of the more NPR-tolerated descriptive notes about wines tasted by various authors catalogued by Mr. Klem. I hope you enjoyed them. But reading them and a lot more in his encyclopedic volume dissecting the verbal [pyscho-] babble world of wine-writing in English, I thought, oh no! Does my own writing smack of this kind of drivel? And the question arose; just who does the wine media scribble for? Themselves? The New Yorker’s editors? Their readers (you, the serious consumer, or you, the wine professional),? Or the great mass of anomalous casual consumers who like and buy wine on the spur of the moment at their local Safeway or Walmart?
The question is important in the context that Everyone in the wine world today appears concerned about the decline in wine consumption, that younger generations are giving up on wine and going towards cocktails, low-alcohol drinks or horrors, teetotalism! (Though a recent Wine Market Council research study suggests this might not be quite the case- [Wine Market Council: U.S. Wine Consumer Benchmark Segmentation Survey, 2023]) Another question that rebounds around wine circles is whether too much wine is being produced globally. Is over-production the problem due to the economics, or are too few wine consumers not interested in drinking their fair share? And are they not drinking because they are confused, overwhelmed, insecure or ignorant? These questions beg an answer, though not today here.
Yet from this survey, “One area of general agreement between countries, in addition to taste, was a ‘recommendation from someone I trust.’ Since wine can be a confusing product to purchase, many consumers rely on recommendations to help them decipher the great wall of wine that they often confront at the grocery store or wine shop. (my highlighting-JB)
“Some of these recommendations come from close friends or family members, whereas other recommendations may come from online sources, such as social media sites and wine apps. Some consumers consult a wine shop employee that they’ve come to know, and a few rely on wine critics or a trusted publication that they follow in print or online.” (New Survey Reveals How Consumers Select Wine: Taste Trumps Price” Liz Thach, MW Contributor 9/6/2023, Forbes.com
The critical mode of communication is central to the conclusions reached. Friends talk to friends in a ‘knowing way’ based upon personal knowledge of their respective personalities, education, experience etc. The words they choose are probably very different, and likely more direct, than those written by a wine critic, or wine buyer/salesperson on a shelf talker. That ‘Great Wall of Wine’ noted above requires a lot of verbiage to understand. Communicating ‘wine’ to others is not unlike talking about art, or film.
Describing and analyzing these subjects is subjective and invariably associative, though as one gains expertise, I would suggest that a certain degree of objectivity enters the picture as one gains knowledge and understanding of the deeper processes and knowledge that practitioners of the discipline (wine-growing, painting) generally agree upon as critical markers for measuring quality; theirs and others.
Still, after 50+ years writing, talking about, and recommending wines to people, I have found my efforts most effective when phrased in generally recognized terms. Yes, describing a wine’s taste and style by referencing common other foods, smells and tastes may be boring & possibly repetitive, while a string of adjectives (‘Strong, earthy, sous-bois rich dark fruit nose…’-Guilty!) is tedious to non-wine aficionados. Yet most people, I believe, will be able to understand what the wine tastes like and whether it appeals to them, unlike trying to decipher what ‘Yak drool’ or ‘Robitussin or Dimetane, with skunk on the finish’ signifies.
I appreciate a fine phrase of poetic license as much as anyone else-florid and metaphorical wine prose is ideal for satirical novels, wine in history works, and for making a pointed, critical comment about the general quality of a wine (‘About as friendly as a sumo wrestler with diaper rash’?; ‘Touches my soul in a very special way’?). But these really do nothing to tell a person wishing to buy a wine for dinner what the wine tastes like, what to expect or help them decide if they will like the wine or not.
What associative words about taste, color, smell and texture we use should be relevant to the majority of people in your principal environment. The word ‘graphite’ (lead pencil, cedar, earthy-mineral, creosote?) for most of us with a west European cultural background, describes a distinctive aroma character of cabernet sauvignon-based wines, for example, whether from France, California or Chile.
But it would be near meaningless to most Chinese or other East Asian wine-drinkers, just as describing a wine as having the aroma of Durian or Carambola to someone with a western cultural heritage would be meaningless. This has nothing to do with a qualitative comment about these words (see Yak Drool above), where fanciful language may be appropriate, so long as that language is generally understood by the audience. Context is vitally important. Knowing your audience, or at least imagining who your audience is, should dictate how one describes wine in a way that conveys style and quality appropriately.
When I first began to write about wines, tasted on my initial wine trip to Europe in Fall, 1972, I was a novice in tasting experience. Even though I had read a number of then ‘important’ wine books: Alexis Lichine’s Wines of France, Frank Schoonmaker & Tom Marvel’s American Wines, Andre Simon & S. F. Hallgarten’s The Great Wines of Germany and its Famed Vineyards and a couple more.
I thus had some book knowledge of fine wine, a little personal knowledge derived from family experience, and of course the history was fascinating to a recently minted History graduate. But my vocabulary was poorly limited at first, and most of what I would say about wines tasted was succinct, even vague. What I read in those books and others was often poetic and/or comparative (‘reminds me of the 1899 Ch Margaux…’) in ways that eluded my understanding -so what? Was this a positive or negative reference? What does a Chateau Margaux even taste like? [I learned what Ch. Margaux (1970-71) tasted like a week or so later, happily] I wrote primarily for Me, while mindful of the wider audience of wine store owners who were effectively paying for the information I could glean by tasting wines they might be buying in the near future.
In Spain, visiting Bodegas Torres near Barcelona, a 1955 Torres Gran Coronas was “super mellow, with lovely violet bouquet and rich color-perfect- also very expensive! In Florence at Antinori (for the first time) a 1969 Santa Cristina Chianti Classico revealed “excellent body (fantastic ‘legs’)-deeper color-nose of violets and musty-little less full, yet will be good in 2-3 years”. A 1971 Ch La Gaffelière 1er Grand Cru St. Émilion [Merlot, Cabernets blend] tasted from cask was “delicious, considering youth-already mellow, good bouquet and pleasing aftertaste-tannic content must be low, for this should be an excellent wine in a few years, & quite nice in cask.”
That was one of my longer notes; then again, fine Bordeaux wines were the most important type of wines American wine merchants of the day were most keen to know about, as were their primary customers. This was one of the first wines of any kind I tasted on this inaugural ‘wine-trip’. Tasting young Bordeaux in cask is rough work—I really didn’t know what to expect exactly but had to use words that were overall generic. The wine ultimately turned out pretty well, but I am not sure if I would have called it ‘excellent’ given my current experience! (Though looking at comments from 7-8 years ago on Vivino consumer review site about this wine note that it was still pretty good if definitely mature).
Associative language is a necessity when writing about wine, simply because there are hundreds, even thousands of compounds that make up the taste of wine, many of them commonly found in specific fruits or plants that most people are familiar with. Those myriad compounds (and the wonder of fermentation) are why Wine is one of the few comestibles that has the capacity to taste of many things, not just the ding am sich, the thing itself only, of a strawberry, or green pepper for example.
For this reason, I have continued to communicate about wine to people using familiar, concrete references which may make my writing prosaic, but provides the reader with solid, understandable, baseline words that explain what the wine is about and what to expect, as well as making a qualitative statement including its future potential, if any. People are generally familiar (at least in the cultural context I write from) with a lot of these references.
Subsequently, I have developed a wider vocabulary, necessary because most people have a difficult time either associating or remembering the taste, smell and texture of a wine with words that make sense to them. Just for comparison, contrast the note above about the 1971 Ch La Gaffelière with this one written 50 years later about the 2020 Ch La Gaffelière: “Dark ruby, hint violet, near opaque. Fine, floral cherry-herbal and cassis accented bouquet with a hint of peppercorn. Stylish, ripe but elegant palate with graphite, cassis, cherry fruit. Medium full body. Lovely finessed tannins. Stylish, long very mineralité finish. Delicious, structured and long. Beautiful wine. +2035. Ok…mineralité is not exactly a familiar descriptor for most people to comprehend about wine, but sometimes only a vague, poetic word will do to describe an elusive quality in a wine. The point is that long experience with wine means that I and other good wine critics/tasters have developed our memory experience of smells and tastes because we need to work effectively in our field.
Most people almost immediately enjoy or dislike a wine; the yum-yuck factor as my friend and fellow MW Tim Hanni smartly (not snarkly!) described it decades ago. But they don’t know why usually, and they lack the vocabulary to describe their viewpoint. Because of that, they flail about, trial and error tasting wines without understanding, or get stuck in a rut drinking only those which resemble most the wines that appealed to them and nothing else.
I suppose if I had a more creative mind that could write wonderful, colorful prose, or had a more snarky sense of humor, I would write more amusingly. For that I strongly recommend a work such as the irrepressible Ralph Steadman’s The Grapes of Ralph. Alas, that’s just not me. And I don’t think that would well serve readers, or the producers whose wines are critiqued. Often while judging wine competitions, judges are asked to provide reasons for their evaluation, positive or negative. Producers (mostly?) want honest criticism, not cheap praise from those who taste their wines professionally. Florid language or sarcasm; “Your wine tastes of grass cuttings steaming away on the compost heap” speaks to the critic’s distaste, but really doesn’t help a producer understand what is wrong, nor does it enlighten a consumer about the wine’s overall character, constructively speaking.
Now, if I ever thought to write a wine novel…Nope~!
Oh no, not durian!
This is an excellent resource for "How to/How not to describe wine"