A language issue

Thorn Clark Sandpiper Shiraz. Photo / Babiche Martens

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself... You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out," warned writer and wine lover, Kingsley Amis when touching on the pitfalls of describing wine is his book Everyday Drinking.

Anyone communicating about wine is working at the limits of language. The first four basic tastes - bitter, sour, salty and sweet - are evoked easily enough by the terms that define them, although the fifth, umami was only recognised recently, arguably due to the fact that Western cultures found it difficult to describe. However, taste is also shaped by the thousands of aromas we can detect, most of which remain unnamed. This largely limits us to using comparisons when trying to relate what we smell and consequently taste.

Winemaking has its own set of scientific terms, which break down wines into their component parts. However, levels of acidity, pH, dry extract and residual sugar do little to illuminate most wine drinkers and only convey a fraction of a wine's complex flavour profile. It's no wonder that similes and metaphors abound when people talk about what's in their glass.

In the absence of accurate terminology, wine writers, makers and marketers are forced to borrow from different spheres, with one popular source being the natural world. This offers a cornucopia of fruits, as very few grape varieties make wine that actually tastes of grapes, as well as some apt descriptors arising from foodstuffs that share compounds with certain varieties, such as sauvignon blanc and green capsicums or syrah and peppercorns.

Wines are also regularly imbued with human attributes: from bodily parts such as muscles and bones, to characteristics such as the austerity and nervousness lambasted by Amis. My personal pet hate is assigning a gender to a wine, with feminine implying softness and masculine suggesting something more structured.

"Like Naomi Campbell in latex" is the way one cabernet was described in the now defunct Wine X magazine, which employed humorously irreverent wine reviews to engage with its younger readership. When it comes to wine descriptions, "there are circumstances where a little fantasy is appropriate", concurred legendary French oenologist, Emile Peynaud, and I'm inclined to agree as most wine writing functions to entertain as well as inform.

What hasn't been so appetising was the way a lot of traditional wine language has distanced drinkers rather than attracted them. Esoteric prose, often laced with sexism and class prejudice, has played its part in mystifying wine and is always in danger of veering so far away from the liquid in the glass to verge on incomprehensible or plain ridiculous.

What's important is using a common vocabulary. A wine may resemble the smell of my granny's pantry or the durian fruit, but the former's too personal and the latter way too obscure. But when making your private observations, such references can be invaluable in helping you recall a wine.

While we may be imperfectly equipped, linking words with a wine's characters is what creates more perceptive tasters. And if you fancy honing these skills, I'd go against Amis's advice and suggest you try to find more descriptors than just red, dry, strong, and pleasant.

Descriptive darlings

Barossa beauty

Thorn Clark Sandpiper Barossa Shiraz 2007 $18.99-$19.99
Offering a rich and juicy mouthful of ripe plummy fruit laced with rum truffle, spice and coffee beans - carries its ample flesh with considerable elegance.
(Widely available from fine wine stores and supermarkets such as New World.)

A stich in time

Jackson Estate Stich Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2008 $22.50
Jackson Estate has added the nickname of the winery's founder and owner, John "Stich" Stichbury to its sauvignon. Jackson's latest again delivers a powerful but elegant palate of passionfruit, red capsicum and oregano over citrus and stone.
(From Point Fine Wines, Bacchus Cellars, selected branches of Glengarry.)

New discovery

Discovery Point Marlborough Dry Riesling 2008 $22
Discovery Point is the recently launched label of local Master of Wine Stephen Bennett. Its riesling, made in a dry, food-friendly style, is complex, with notes of zesty grapefruit and spice.
(From Wine Vault, Accent on Wine, Peter Maude, Point Wines, Bacchus, Mairangi Bay Fine Wine, Herne Bay Cellars, Counties Super Liquor Pukekohe, Primo Vino, Hillsdene Wines.)