What’s that all about?
Posted by Martin Field on 1 March 2005 in WineAustralian wine writers will persist in using language in wine reviews that is incomprehensible to most of their readers. How do I know? I read out bits of reviews to my introductory wine classes and ask them if they know what the reviewers mean. Most often they don’t.
Some examples, cassis (French – blackcurrant liqueur); gooseberry (acidic fruit – hardly any of my Australian students would know a gooseberry if they fell over one); sweaty saddle (somewhat archaic but used to be a desirable! constituent of Hunter Valley wines); tobacco (many younger people don’t and have never smoked); cigar box (see previous), barnyard (how many yuppies know or want to know what a barnyard smells like? And if they did why would they want to drink wine that smells or tastes like cow manure?); Brett. (brettanomyces – yeast that can spoil wine); redolent (a top shelf word that means pleasing odour of whatever); malo (malolactic fermentation – induced secondary wine fermentation e.g. character found in wooded, soft, buttery chardonnays.)
