Australian 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.)
I think you’re being a bit narrow-minded here. If we were to abandon the samples you’ve offered for incomprehensibility we might drastically impact the ability to describe the wine. Language is a powerful instrument and, just as with music, restricting the instrument to only a half-dozen notes would make the symphony dull indeed.
If wine has a cassis note, it shouldn’t be described as something else–would it be a smaller, sweeter, more intense, raspberryish sort of French liqueur flavor? Isn’t it simpler to describe it as what it is in the fewest appropriate words? If the reader or listener doesn’t understand, they might look it up.
I’m not sure sweaty saddle is a metaphor that would attract me, not knowing whether it was the top or bottom side of the saddle that had been sweated upon, but worn, rich leather might do the job. No Corinthians need apply with all due respect for Ricardo Montalban.
If someone who has never smoked needs to know what “cigar box” or “tobacco” smells like, they could readily drop into a tobacconist and revel in the richness of the aromas. Pick up a Monte Cristo #1 and run it beneath your nose and breath deeply–you’ll understand. And, the two descriptors in question aren’t regarding the by-product of combustion, but the deep aromas of the pre-burned herb.
As for “Brett” and “malo-lactic”, I’ll confess to ignorance until one day I was describing a flawed wine and someone said that sounds like “Brett” and then I knew. A buttery Chard which I’d always thought came from some oaking process was explained as malo-lactic fermentation. I got wiser, if not better looking, through the process.
Dumbing down the language because of ignorance of the audience isn’t a direction I’d recommend.