What do the following four phrases have in common? "Raspberry fruit caressed by lush mocha, spice and toast" . . . "mint and dark chocolate . . . coffee, prune and black currant notes lie underneath" . . . "bacon, mesquite and coffee" . . . "truffle, tea, sous-bois and baked plum and cherry." . . .
Yes, of course they're all specimens of wine-taster jargon, but what else? Give up? They are also descriptions, all from the same taster (Wine Spectator's James Molesworth) of four recent modestly priced bottlings of a grape called pinotage, South Africa's sole (and dubious) claim to wine originality. Pinotage at best makes rather coarse wine (grape expert Jancis Robinson describes it as "beefy"); when it's not at its best it can remind one less of truffles and prunes than (Robinson again) drains and disinfectant.
Now honestly, would you suspect that, given the descriptions quoted above? More important, having read any of those descriptions, do you feel able to hazard a guess at which of the four might appeal to you more than another? Goodness only knows, anyone who's ever attended a large wine tasting must sympathize with professional tasters, who are expected to sample and distinguish as many as 200 wines at one go. They have to come up with some kind of shorthand to record their impressions and communicate them to other professionals.
But that doesn't make the system any the less baffling for mere lovers of the grape. It makes anybody who can't shoot this particular line of shit feel like a ninny. Worst of all, it sends anyone who really wants to appreciate wine off in precisely the wrong direction, because when it comes right down to it, wine doesn't taste like leather or cloves or bacon; it tastes like wine. It's hard enough getting to know and remember how different grape varieties taste, and then how geography and climate modulate those basic tastes. Superimposing a few hundred misleading descriptors, and implicitly awarding points for how many disparate fragments one can break the gestalt down into, is no way to enhance anyone's pleasure.
It's hard to convey a wine experience without these wobbly crutches, but it's possible. The experience of music is as hard to convey, but critics are no longer allowed to get away with writing sentences like "The scherzo opens with a syncopated figure in dotted eighth notes, but the initial E major is quickly subverted by a modulation to the subdominant." (For a shining example, read Alex Ross in The New Yorker.) Wine writers, get with the program! You're supposed to be clearing the air for us, not just blowing smoke!
PS: What the hell is sous-bois?
Get This!
We wouldn't ordinarily quote a winemaker's blurb, but in this case we couldn't put it better ourselves: Seven Hills syrah (about $30) does boast "a trinity of fruit, acidity, and tannin . . . delicious upon release." The 2000 is in shops now; the 2001 will be in shortly. Both are glorious, fresh as can be, balanced beyond belief.
rdowney@seattleweekly.com
