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.