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Blah, Blah, Blah: Decoding Snobby Wine Talk

Is anything worse than listening to a roomful of wine snobs dribble on about “the lovely bouquet” or a wine that’s “rich and full-bodied yet racy and svelte”? It seems they speak a language only distantly related to our own. Sure, it’s based on the same words we use, but in arrangements that can border on the ridiculous. And yet they go on for hours, tasting wine after wine and following each with a stream of babble that seems to make no sense.

The amazing thing is that they appear to understand each other and to get great pleasure from these seemingly inane conversations. If so, there might be some method to this verbal madness, and perhaps even something to be gained from understanding it.

The problem, and it’s one we all have, is that most languages have a limited capacity to describe flavors and aromas. Think about this for a minute: we can describe buildings or people or attitudes or objects or a landscape we’ve seen in great detail, painting precise and vivid pictures that effectively communicate our thoughts, feelings and impressions. But try describing the taste of a blueberry.

Not so easy, is it? How about the smell of soap—not perfumed, just plain old soap? Or the taste of a cucumber, the flavor of a carrot, the smell of a freshly cut tomato, or the aroma of a rose or a walk through the woods? Can you adequately describe any of these? Few people can, even though we can all identify these smells and flavors when we encounter them. We’re just not taught how to discuss flavor or aroma, and our languages don’t have the words to do so.

Which brings us back to the winos at the tasting. They’re all fans of a beverage that has hundreds of subtle and not-so-subtle variations. They’re also fans of a beverage that can be fairly costly and that is stunningly good when it’s at its best. For all these reasons, it makes sense that wine lovers would want, would need, some way to communicate and share impressions about wine. Since we all have individual preferences, it isn’t enough to simply say a wine tastes good or bad. According to whom? You may love a wine that I don’t really care for, or vice versa. Do you want to spend money on a wine just because I say it’s good, without knowing why?

Yes, it may be good. It may be a quite well-made wine, but also one that isn’t to your taste. This means that a more detailed, descriptive and evaluative language, commonly understood, is necessary for one wine drinker to intelligently discuss wine with another.

Since no such descriptive aspect is part and parcel of modern language, wine enthusiasts (drinkers, growers, vintners, etc.) have developed their own lingo, and like all languages, it has evolved and matured over the years. It naturally borrows heavily from sensuous (i.e., of the senses) verbiage and is filled with references to all sorts of smells and flavors but also to sight, to touch and even to human emotion and characteristics.

Though instances and mentions of wine go back to ancient times, with such precise and insightful declarations as “a fine drink” and “pleasing in great measure,” it was during the twentieth century that writing for the customer, as opposed to the trade, really came of age, spearheaded by the English. They were, to be sure, heavily influenced by the French, from whom they bought most of what they drank (and still do). Their wine language and descriptions borrowed heavily from sensuous, even sexual verbiage, and at times it was hard to tell if certain writers were describing wine or recording their own erotic daydreams.

Tasting notes in those days were replete with references to “voluptuousness” and “sex appeal” and other such phrasing that had little or nothing to do with the contents of a wine glass. More recently, at least since the 1980s, an outburst of American wine writing has retreated from the sensual and moved toward comparing wine to things we have probably smelled or tasted. Wine-speak can actually be very creative, helping expand the ability to understand, identify and describe the world.

And so, enough with the preliminaries. On to the specifics.

The obvious:

Assorted fruit and vegetable aromas and flavors:

• Apple
• Apricot
• Banana
• Bell pepper
• Blackberry
• Black cherry
• Black olive
• Blueberry
• Cassis
• Cherry
• Dates
• Fig
• Grapefruit
• Grass
• Green olive
• Kiwi
• Lemon
• Lime
• Lychee
• Melon
• Mint
• Orange
• Peach
• Pear
• Pineapple
• Plums
• Prune
• Raisin
• Raspberry
• Strawberry

Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you talking about?

There are no figs or green olives in my glass of wine.

TECHNICAL DRIVEL

Q: None of those items, with the exception of grapes, are actually in wine, are they? (Not unless the discussion has moved to fruit wines.) So why are they listed, and why are they part of wine-speak?

A: That’s right, none of the fruits or vegetables listed above, excepting grapes, is found in the type of wine we’re talking about. But the same or very similar chemical compounds do exist in wine as in a variety of other foods and organic substances.

For example, consider the phenolic compound C10H12O2, also known as frambinone, oxyphenylon, or rasketone and commonly called raspberry ketone. As you may have guessed, it’s the primary aroma element in raspberries and is also present in wine!

So while verbal jousting over whether a wine offers aromas of cherry or strawberry or of blackberry or blueberry may be pointless and very much a case of “in the nose of the beholder,” there are real and definite chemical relationships between common tastes and aromas and those drifting up to our olfactory receptors from a glass of wine.

Now it gets easier to understand a taster who swirls and sniffs and samples a glass of Chardonnay and raises her head to say, “This is bursting with green apple and pear and even has a touch of fig in the background.” Basic wine-speak. Unadorned. She has simply absorbed the volatile compounds in the wine and related them to smells and aromas she already knows.

The less obvious:

Flavors and aromas also present that derive from fermentation and aging, either in wood (usually oak) or in bottle. As wine is made and ages, the many compounds it’s composed of interact with each other, with whatever oxygen the wine comes into contact with, and with natural compounds from oak barrels, creating entirely new chemical combinations and aromas.

Derived from fermentation and aging in oak:

• Almond
• Bread
• Butter
• Butterscotch
• Caramel
• Cedar
• Clove
• Coconut
• Creamy
• Graphite
• Nutty
• Spicy
• Smoky
• Toasty
• Vanilla
• Yeasty

Derived from bottle aging:

• Bacon
• Barnyard
• Chocolate
• Cigar box
• Coffee
• Earthy
• Gamey
• Honey
• Leather
• Soy sauce
• Tobacco
• Tar

And now the basis for tasting notes and wine-speak like “wonderful aromas of cassis and dark plums, with a backdrop of leather and tobacco, followed by a hint of chocolate on the finish.”

So far, it’s all pretty straightforward, or at least understandable. And while it might take a bit of practice (and confidence in your own perceptions) to spout forth, it’s become apparent that there’s no mystery here. However …

From here, things get a bit more dicey. Casual beer afficiandos may content themselves with an assessment of a beer’s color or the robustness of its flavor, while the cognoscenti get quite specific, appraising major characteristics such as color (SRM), bitterness (IBU) and gravity in precise, quantifiable terms. These are scientific measurements and have much to do with whether a beer is judged as good, great or should-have-stayed-at-home.

In comparison, wine assessment—or “sensory evaluation” if you’d like to adopt the high-falutin’ term—is, at its extreme, downright imprecise. Official scorecards aside, wine drinkers runneth over with zip lingo and arcane language used to supplement the relatively straightforward fruit, fermentation and aging terms mentioned above.

Beer drinkers drink and then they talk. About the beer, and then about sports, politics, work, and, of course, the opposite sex. And wine drinkers drink and then they talk. About the wine, and then even more about the wine, and then about sports, politics, work, and the opposite sex. And often about the wine again, although by this time in language that many find indecipherable. And so, sports fans, on to advanced wine-speak.

The barely obvious:

Subjective, interpretive, insider-oriented and in need of definitions:

• Agreeable—pleasing, with good fruit, well made, not too much of anything
• Aggressive—reasonably well balanced but with big, somewhat hard tannins and/or high alcohol or acidity
• Austere—with a good streak of tannin or acidity or both but lacking in fruit or alcohol “fatness”
• Chunky—medium- to full-bodied, decent tannin, shows more leather, tobacco, smoky notes
• Closed—lacking aroma, very little smell
• Clumsy—the product of poor winemaking, out of balance, too much alcohol or tannin, feels manipulated
• Complex—showing at least three or more distinct identifiable flavors
• Dumb—a wine that has aged beyond its youthful freshness and exuberance but hasn’t yet developed the appealing aspects of maturity, often used in reference to Bordeaux of ± 5 to 8 years
• Delicate—light- to medium-bodied, low alcohol, noticeable if slight tannin
• Earthy—a positive when referring to characteristics of soil (chalky, minerally) but a negative when it refers to a moldy or cabbage aroma
• Effusive—great volatiles, extremely aromatic
• Fat—full-bodied with good alcohol
• Faulty—a flawed wine with serious chemical or bacteriological problems
• Feminine—light- to medium-bodied, often characterized by red fruit flavors such as strawberry and cherry, as opposed to heavier black fruits like blackberry and cassis; also has a freshness derived from a bit more acid and a bit less alcohol or tannin
• Flabby—unbalanced, specifically lacking in acidity, dull on the palate
• Generous—good fruit, pleasing alcohol, may or may not be complex but certainly enjoyable
• Grip—the textural feel of a wine on the palate
• Hollow—lack of sensation or weight when held in the mouth
• Insipid—drinkable but boring, without pleasure, often reflective of the low-quality end of mass-produced wine
• Integrated—a wine in which disparate elements have come together as desired during aging
• Long—an extended finish, a wine with flavors and mouth feel that continue well after swallowing
• Masculine—full-bodied, displaying big tannin, high alcohol and dark fruit, leather and spiciness
• Mouth feel—the overall sensation of weight, texture, flavors, alcohol, etc., of a wine on the tongue and palate
• Persistent—lingering sensation, not fading away
• Quaffable—easy to drink, not necessarily great but enjoyable
• Reticent—closed, not open with either aromas or flavor
• Rich—well-developed fruit flavors, may indicate ripe fruit or a small amount of residual sugar or both
• Rustic—an indigenous wine made in the local, traditional manner, may seem a bit rough or unharmonious
• Silky—an extremely smooth finish, perfectly integrated tannins, not too much alcohol or acidity, nothing harsh
• Structure—the backbone of a wine, refers to levels of tannin

And that’s just a smattering. But if you can get a sense of these terms and their connections and references to wine, you’ll be well on your way to understanding the most obtuse wine-speak.

The wine was deep-hued, dark ruby-violet running clear to the edge. It opened with effusive aromas of rich blackberry, cassis, a hint of smoke and a slight gaminess. On the palate it was big and fat, overblown with blackberry, blueberry, white pepper and cooked bacon. Full-bodied, great mouth feel, with a persistent, focused finish.

By now, that kind of description should make perfect sense. So try this one:

An oil-drilling roughneck of a wine, fills your head with a gusher of big black aromas. This wine is all muscle and sinew, and when it grabs hold, it won’t let go. Not for the fainthearted.

Or these:

At first as shy as a blushing schoolgirl, until rosy cheeks betray the come-hither glance of dark, piercing eyes, leading to a voluptuous display of rich, ripe fruit and a sprinkling of cinnamon and spice, lively and caressing on the tongue. A lovely wine to brighten a rainy afternoon before the fireplace.

An insouciant little number, a bit racy yet with a reassuring firmness. Tart but not sour, flashy enough to keep one’s interest through a plate of oysters, horseradish and more.

Now that’s wacky wine talk, the last two of a style seldom seen these days. Even so, after gaining familiarity with various levels of wine-speak, it’s mostly understandable. So wine geekdom or not, if you have a basic foundation in the vocabulary of wine, even the silly, snobby chitchat makes sense.