Recently, in this space, my colleague Paul Lukacs wrote about the complications of demystifying wine. He made some good points and the one I like best suggests that (depending on what you want from wine) maybe you want wine to be complicated.
That got me thinking about a sticking point among people who love wine for what it is and those who don’t understand what the big deal is about wine. The doubters point to certain descriptors used by wine writers and wine trades people to explain the character and essence of a wine to those folks who don’t have a clue.
Well, there is no right or wrong in wine appreciation, but certain guiding words or descriptions can help steer a person toward a better understanding of what they are drinking. You’d be wrong, of course, if you insisted on describing a red wine as being white, but in general, wine tasting is about as objective as you can get.
Some descriptors used by American wine writers make little sense to the American wine consumer, often resulting in the claim that writers use purple prose far too often to describe a wine’s aroma or flavor. For sure, there are a few descriptors, like black currant and gooseberry, that have little relevance to many American wine consumers. Black currant, or “cassis” if you want to put an upscale French edge on your description, is not as well known to Americans as, say, blackberry.
The same holds for gooseberry, a descriptor that somehow became associated with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, even though New Zealand winemakers I spoke with said they don’t use gooseberry to describe Sauvignon Blanc and, in fact, they weren’t sure gooseberries grow in New Zealand.
One Kiwi winemaker told me that it was a British wine writer who used the descriptor to describe the aromas and flavors of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Maybe in Britain, but most Americans don’t know from gooseberry but they do understand passion fruit, another descriptor used to describe Sauvignon Blanc.
At the end of the day (or the tasting) a useful wine tasting lexicon has many descriptors; some familiar, some not, but the best advice anyone can give you is to describe a wine you are tasting in terms that make sense to you. Not only will it enhance your appreciation of the wine, but you’ll have a reference point for comparison the next time you have the same style of wine. Now, let’s see, does that white wine taste like lemon peel, lemon pulp and lemon juice…
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