28 July 2010
What We Talk About When We Talk About Wine
by Pscott
Would you recognize Chablis if she walked into a room?
Could you distinguish her from the chatty young Mâcon-Villages at
the corner table, the Meursault showing off her elegant profile at the end
of the bar, the busty California Chardonnay drawing such a crowd at the
entrance? What is it that sets her apart? How would you describe that unmistakable
Chablis look, the distinct quality of her voice, the curious way in which
she holds her glass with only the tips of her fingers? Would you say, she
is about the same height as a girl I went with at university, with eyes
that reminded me of a young woman I once met in Portofino, the same color
hair as my ninth grade sweetheart, and a way of folding her hands over her
drink that is highly reminiscent of a former fiancée of mine—I
mean the Austrian one of course.
Perhaps not.
Yet it is not at all
uncommon for a wine to be described as reminiscent of ripe citrus fruits,
with striking grapefruit notes, hints mango, and a touch of bananas on the
finish. And the wine next to it as full of grapefruit, lemon and
mango, with aromas of lemongrass. And so on. (Hopefully not without
a reminder that each also happens to taste a good deal like white wine and
not, say, something you get at a carnival stand.)
This has a familiar ring to it, of course, for this listing method—which
we shall refer to as being of the Produce Market School of Wine Description—is
the Mother Tongue of the wine profession. This is how people who work with
wine talk to other people who work with wine, about the wine they work with.
And like all good vernaculars it has become a kind of shorthand. So that
Bistro Owner C can say to Wine Distributor E that she will pass on his new
Malbec because the black pepper notes are too forward, and both sides will
understand what this means because both know exactly what quality Malbec
is supposed to tastes like. (Either that, or both will understand that the
last case he sold her is still in the cellar collecting dust.) Among wine
professionals, the Produce Market method not only works but saves time.
Yet what is shorthand to one group of people is code to another. And to
the everyday wine drinker—that is to say the person who enjoys drinking
wine, who may even enjoy learning about wine, but has, for whatever reason,
chosen not to devote their entire life to learning the exact slope of certain
viney hills in southern France—the term black pepper simply leads
to thoughts of, well, black pepper; and the raspberry-blackcurrant-tobacco-cedar-forest-floor
description which inevitably follows to thoughts of something one ought
not to be drinking.
Our everyday wine drinker will still buy something, naturally, as fiancés
charged with picking up a nice bottle of red are wont to do. Whether
he will understand anything about what he is buying, or be more likely to
know this raspberry-blackcurrant-tobacco-cedar-forest-floor wine from that
raspberry-blackcurrant-cigar-box-cedar-dried-leaves wine, is a question
which
leads us to one of the wine world’s little Inconvenient Truths.