As someone who doesn't drink, I enjoy the absurd descriptions of wine. It's a kind of poetry, and try to imagine if something could actually taste that way. More here: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2011/02/velvety_cho... And here: http://www.undergroundwineletter.com/2012/01/birds-of-a-feat.../
I agree with the poetry aspect. This, however is absolutely true: I actually find that more and more wine stores and restaurant menu's are dumbing it down. They tend to have images of fruit or a scale of drinkability etc. -I'm against such things. I was actually asked to join a startup that a friend was creating that was going to make it easy for people to describe, save and share wines they liked with their friends. I immediately realized that I wasn't the consumer they had in mind. I wanted an app that could educate, they wanted one that could ameliorate something that I felt didn't need it. Wine is fine, just how it is. If you feel it's not approachable, maybe it's because you're not trying... I'm looking forward to a chateauneuf du pape I've had sitting around, I'm told it has notes of anise, sweaty saddle and bandaid. -Mmmmm delicious.The first is winespeak, a snobbish, intimidating and often alienating dialect. Here’s an actual example from a leading wine site: “The nose offers up a bountiful bouquet of dark red plum, cassis, rose petal and a touch of minty herbs. The palate is soft and plush, with notes of tobacco, cedar and cigar box. Medium, drying tannins leave you thirsting for more.”
I find nothing wrong with this description or more importantly, nothing that the average person couldn't understand. Perhaps people would have to educate themselves as to what tannins are, but what's wrong with that? Pull out the smart phone people.I assure you that the thought of drying tannins never made me thirst for anything.
I've been thinking about this comment for five hours. On the one hand, the "poetry" is amusing. It is not, however, informative or useful… which is the reason it exists. One man's "notes of plum" is another man's "astringent;" one man's "hints of charcoal" is another's "earthy tones." On the other hand, the article is wrong: the "food" industry hasn't made consumers more food-savvy, they've made consumers more food-*PORN* savvy. People are cooking less than they ever have and watching more Food Network. Most cookbooks are never used in anger. Anybody who does cook is likely looking shit up on Allrecipes, which is a miasma of "mix three canned things together and call it food." Food Network gives people the illusion that they aren't eating 80% frozen Sysco catalog numbers, while magic wine language gives people the illusion they aren't drinking fermented grape juice. Here's the thing: wine "language" exists so that the aspirant middle class can feel like they're making an informed choice about something they can't afford. Backintheday you'd visit vineyards, drink a few bottles, buy a dozen cases and tuck them in your cellar for your butler to pick from. Then the butlered class vanished and all these vineyards needed to sell wine to proles. What better way than to talk down to them? Beer doesn't work like that. You drink it and you like it or you don't. Food doesn't work like that. You buy it and you eat it and you like it or you don't. Wine? "oh, you won't even know what it tastes like for another four years." Really, the wine snobbery is the vestigial remnants of a local industry gone global and about to contract into local again.
There's nothing wrong with caring about something enough to dig in deep and see it for it's finer components. Some wine just taste like grapes and then others.... wow. -And some people may never be able to tell the difference. To some, this is just a blue painting, but you and I both know it's more than that:Really, the wine snobbery is the vestigial remnants of a local industry gone global and about to contract into local again.
From my experience, and I have a good amount of it in the world of wine, there are those that embrace and project the snobbery that you speak of and there are those that embrace the utility of such descriptions. I used to teach wine tasting classes with my pal sounds_sound to incoming servers at an upscale northern italian restaurant. We used phrases like, "herbaceous, grassy" and "soft-tannins" when describing wine. But I don't think we ever did so to be snobby but more to walk these young people, new to the world of wine in to an established pallet of descriptors. Wine is fun and the descriptors used can be fun too. I think wine is snobby when you're being introduced to it by a snob.
If a server tells me that a gewurtztraminer is "fruity and full" she'll often follow up with "would you like to try a little." If Wine Spectator tells me a gewurtztraminer is "fruity and full" they'll say "hints of apple and cranberry with a florid finish and notes of cork and leather - 84/100." This is not entirely Wine Spectator's fault - they can't offer you a sip. And that's what I mean - it's dancing about architecture. Tastes are best shared by tasting. You can do that on a local scale. You can't do that on a global scale. So when you're trying to sell someone a $38 pinot grigio at Safeway, "stupid language" is all you got. That's why I think "die" is far more likely than "adapt" - it's easy to buy a bunch of wine from a local vintner because you can taste it and know it's good. It's hard to justify a $70 bottle of anything via words alone because the words aren't adequate.there are those that embrace and project the snobbery that you speak of and there are those that embrace the utility of such descriptions.
Storytime. I was at the wine store the other day, looking for a specific brand/bottle of wine. They didn't have it. When the sommelier or whoever-he-was asked me what it tasted like, I couldn't tell him. I knew I liked the wine. Did I know if it had "cherry flavors" or "plum" or "rose petal" or "chocolate undertones"? No, and quite frankly, I don't taste those things when I take a sip of a glass of wine. I know what I like and I know what I don't like; I know this by buying bottles of wine, drinking them, and shoving the labels into the correct category in my mind. Eventually I told him I liked easy drinking or "everyday drinking" kind of wines - my joke is that I like "everyday drinking" wines because that's the kind of drinking I do, everyday - and he found me something that was pretty all right. I guess my point is that I don't have a very good understanding of all these terms, I couldn't recognize the flavors or smells if they were used, (matter of fact I don't ) and they're basically all Greek to me. They tell me, personally, nothing about the wine I am buying. I do know what tannins are, for what it's worth. I mean, sure. I may not be trying. I have a terrible sense of smell and an "unrefined" palate. But as long as I can keep plodding along and finding wines I like, it doesn't matter to me if it smells "grassy" or not. In fact, yes, I'd say it's kind of pretentious* because I can't relate to any of it and don't really have any interest in relating to it. I think if you don't want to be an expert in wine, right now, the verbiage used in the industry can prevent you from feeling like you know anything about it. I don't want to be an expert. I just want to be able to grab a bottle I'll like with some confidence. *Keeping in mind that pretention is often in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not pretending that this use is an exception to that.I find nothing wrong with this description or more importantly, nothing that the average person couldn't understand.
I was at the library the other day looking for a book of poems. When the librarian, a poet herself saw me looking she asked me if she could help. "I'm just looking for a book of poetry I really loved but I can't remember the name." She smiled and asked me to describe the poem. "It wasn't too long, but it wasn't short either. It was funny and at the same time heart warming, but not in a cheesy way..." She smiled again and asked, "was it a limerick, a haiku, perhaps a sonnet?" I told her that I wasn't sure about all that but that I really liked the way it sounded when I read it. "Perhaps you recall if it was iambic or whether it had couplets?" I just shrugged. "I just want to read a poem that makes me happy," I told her. She found me something that was pretty all right. I guess my point is that I don't have a very good understanding of the terms in poetry and I wouldn't recognize them as I read, they're basically all greek to me. They tell me nothing about the poem I'm reading. I do know what a Haiku is fwiw. I could try harder to know more about poetry, but why so long as I find poems I like? I feel like words such as acrostic, madrigal or quatrain are pretentious and keep people from really knowing anything about poetry. ;-)
Your example uses words to describe words. These are words that have been defined by other words and codified to describe systems of words. The subject at hand uses words to describe complex interactions between organic chemistry and somatic response. These are words that are completely arbitrary and offer systemic guidance only through familiarity or ad-hoc comparison. Once more, with feeling - there's a noteworthy dearth of useful terminology at play here. However, the approach taken by the wine industry is to increase obfuscation rather than clarity. Wines also aren't about anything, unlike poetry. One can launch social movements. The other pairs well with fish.
I don't think we disagree at all. I'm not trying to defend the wine industry, I agree that they could likely make things more approachable without sacrificing the utility or even poetry used in describing their products. I do think that some people fail to even see the "useful terminology" and that's really what I'm trying to speak to. All this talk of wine... there's literally no chance of me not drinking wine tonight.
Said with poetry in mind; said knowing that I often feel pretentious and know that the word can be levelled at me, if one chooses, in regards to poetry. I agree that using the more advanced, shall we say, words of a given trade can make a dabbler or novice feel alienated or looked down upon. I am aware that the words used in wine tasting have specific meanings and usages. I looked at a wine chart that delineated these once. It was astounding. Unfortunately, it was about as edifying as you or the theoretical narrator of your post would find a chart of poetic terms.*Keeping in mind that pretention is often in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not pretending that this use is an exception to that.
My point was to use something that I know you are passionate about and love as an example of how an in depth understanding has to come with more in depth language and descriptors. You know the old adage that eskimo's have hundreds of words for "snow." When I look at snow I see "snow." When they look at snow they can see a vast array of various textures, colors and conditions. We're looking at the same snow. You're tasting all those descriptors you mentioned, you've just not given them proper names and compartments in that big brain of yours. Tell ya what, some day you, me and kleinbl00 are having a wine tasting :)
TNG makes a good point. I think I've mentioned this before, but the only way to learn about wine is to drink comparatively. Meaning, drink two/three wines at the exact same time - not one bottle and then the next. If I were to put two glasses in front of you there's no doubt that you could tell me which has deeper colors, which smells more like bruised fruit, and which one has a longer finish. When you're just drinking one, all that goes out the window.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm one of those obnoxious people where, if you put six spices in a meal, I'll be able to tell you what two of them are, guess two more, and have a 50/50 chance at what's left. My palate is not superlative but I have decent senses of taste and smell. That said, the terms used in describing wine are… argumentative, to my way of thinking. People do the same thing with Scotch and for me, it all boils down to "more or less sweet" "more or less smoky" "more or less complex" and "more or less proof." I've got five single-malts in the cabinet right now and three blends.
I'm not educated about wine, but certainly the same thing exists with scotch. There are a couple more descriptors that apply, for example honey, vanilla and fruity are scotch terms that can be understood in certain ways that are consistent (although the flavors they refer to don't exactly match what we think of as honey or vanilla in their more traditional forms). But definitely when they start using terms like "Notes of rubber spearmint leaves and gentle smoke with a hint of warm kippers" (which is how Master of Malt describes my favorite whisky), that's when my eyes start rolling.