Does it strike you as strange that so much talk about wine is about wine talk itself? There’s certainly plenty to be said about somm (that’s sommelier) speak with its arcane vocabulary and bizarre syntax. One often hears the complaint that people writing and talking about wine are employing a kind of autonomous language (or just gibberish) and that they seem as determined to obfuscate things as to explicate them.
A big part of the problem, I’ve come to think, is how far we’ve gone in describing wine almost solely in terms of the specific flavors and discrete aromas that can be teased out of it. Standing as a Certified Wine Know-something today is closely correlated with the number of these elements one can ferret out of a glass.
Consumers, I fear, steer perilously close to soft drink territory when they ask for a wine that’s lemony, or are seduced by a note that promises flavors of “ripe plums and dark chocolate.” And while such an approach can provide a certain level of information, it not only fails to address more important issues, like structure, character and quality, it actually draws our attention away from these elements, conveying a false sense of mastery along the way. This is no way to go about things.
To really size up a wine quickly and accurately and be able to talk about it in terms that will make sense to any genuine Wine Know-something, start by considering the degree to which each of the following elements makes its presence felt: body, fruit, acid, texture and alcohol. Why these five? Because these are the primary elements that influence our sensory experience and together shape any wine’s fundamental nature. For each of these, consider whether it presents as about average, less than average, or above average. For want of a better term, we’ll call these dimensions.
Next, take a step back and consider the overall experience in terms of two features: scale and proportion. I think of scale as an impression of the total mass, weight or heft of the wine. If you rated body, texture and alcohol dimensions above average, the scale of the wine will be above average, too.
Lastly, consider whether these five dimensions seem appropriate with respect to each other. This is the proportion part. Whether the scale be monumental or diminutive, wine is generally more pleasing when its various parts are commensurate with each other. A huge hit of fruit coupled with low acidity, for example, can put an otherwise sound wine out of whack and seldom makes for an appetizing or engaging sip.
Scale and proportion are highly underrated values and much more reliable indicators of whether a wine is appropriate for the occasion (supper on a mid-winter night; garden party on sultry July afternoon) than an evocative list of discrete — and frequently whimsical — tastes and aromas.
Taking the measure of wine in this way doesn’t require you to learn any new vocabulary and involves no particular gift for phrase-turning. But, if at a restaurant table or retail shop you ask for a wine with substantial body, ge.nerous fruit, lively acidity, a sleek texture, all in a nice drinkable package there isn’t any somm or shopkeeper worth his stemware who won’t know precisely what you have in mind.