Tasting the Sun: Winespeak is necessary, not snobbish

“The taste is of ripe blackberries, sun and smoke.” What is it? Maybe the firefighters’ run-off water after the recent fires that burned some blackberry vines. Naah! It’s another of S. Irene Virbila’s ridiculous descriptions of a bottle of wine (“Wine of the Week: 2002 Coto de Hayas Garnacha Centenaria,” Dec. 17). What does the sun taste like? - From a letter in the Jan. 7, 2004, Los Angeles Times What does the sun taste like? Well, the first time I really tasted the sun was unforgettable. I squinted and let my eyes roll back a little in my head and fell asleep for not even the briefest of seconds. I smelled grass growing and knew the taste of 11. It tasted like the sound of water splashing. It tasted like the indifferent activity of birds in the morning, when the air is still cool. OK, maybe the exasperated letter-writer has a point about the often ephemeral and sometimes incomprehensible language of wine writing. So we don’t know what sun tastes like to Ms. Virbila of the Los Angeles Times. But then we don’t really know what blackberries taste like to her, either. While we hope and believe that we all know the taste of blackberries, do we ever really know what anything tastes like to anyone else? And blackberries are a fairly common referent in wine descriptions; what about common wine descriptors like cassis, minerals and earth? I know what they taste like to me, but to you they could be entirely different. People love to assail what’s known as “winespeak,” that sometimes abstruse vocabulary used to communicate the characteristics of smell, taste and texture. For me, though, winespeak is a rather plump, slow-moving target that a lot of people like to shoot at and then consider themselves clever. While there’s a lot of grey area in talking about wine, the psychology of the insecurity winespeak brings out in people tends to be much more visceral than any Cabernet Sauvignon. Consider the following point that Leonard S. Bernstein makes in his book “The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery”: “You are sure to be regarded as a first-class wine snob if you discern the aroma of violets in a red wine. Naturally, you make much of this, exhibiting considerable excitement and, of course, conviction. Conviction above all else; after all, who can contradict you? The best they can say is that they do not detect the aroma of violets, at which time it will be apparent that their experience is limited and they will feel appropriately humiliated.” And what he says is true. If you say you detect something in a wine, no one can really refute you. Just as no one can call you a liar if you say, “I’m cold” on a hot day or, “I’m scared” at a teddy bear convention. Anyway, what use is it to be able to describe a wine when the best we can do is to express our own subjective experience? Well, there are several reasons to attain even a minimal degree of fluency in winespeak. For one, it allows you to communicate. The best way to learn about wine is to taste with those who know more about wine than you do. As such, it’s good to understand what they might mean when calling a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand “crisp” (a common descriptor) or a Pinot Noir from California’s central coast “balanced” (an uncommon descriptor). We know what it means for a character in a television show to be “complex,” but what does that word mean for wine, to which it might be commonly ascribed? (It means that a wine has several facets. In the aroma, you might be able to clearly smell several different referents, e.g. blackberry, smoke and, er, sun. In your mouth, you might sense that it has an interesting “shape,” pulling your tongue in different directions.) In short, these phrases are necessary to communicate in language about something that inherently defies linguistic expression. Sure, charges of snobbery can be easily lobbed against people who throw around winespeak indiscriminately. But expertise in any field can be used in such a manner. I remember when, as a teenager, I worked in an office for a summer job. Working with me was another teen who was growing up outside of town. He was in the Future Farmers of America Program, while I was trying to be editor of my school’s literary magazine. I remember that he would try to torment me with such sneers as, “You don’t know what maize is?” and “He doesn’t know what Johnson grass looks like.” So I wasn’t conversant in farmspeak. Big deal. But I couldn’t call him a snob, as people are wont to do to anyone who knowledgably talks about wine. I may not know what sun tastes like, but I’ll defend any writer’s right to say that a wine tastes like it. The sensation of wine is so personal, so ephemeral, that we must resort to any language that we have to communicate. Don’t be afraid to state what you think. It’s all valid. Don’t make fun of people for trying, however indecipherably, to describe how a wine tastes to them. Taste it and see for yourself if it tastes like your idea of the sun.