Describing Wines: Finding the Right Words

At least once a day, I have this conversation with a customer:

Customer: “I had a great bottle of wine with dinner last night.”
Me: “Excellent. What did it taste like?”
Customer: “I don’t know -- it was -- I just know it was good.”

Finding the Words

We taste from memory. In other words, I can go on for hours about the earthiness and complexity of a St. Emilion, but unless you’ve tried one, you won’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about. I find it easy to break down wine into very simple terms. Was the wine you had...
Light or Dark?
Spicy or Smooth?
Fruity or Minerally?


Finding the Flavors

Customers often ask for “sweet” wine. Most wine is not sweet. Very few varietals are sweet: usually Rieslings (grown in Germany and U.S.) or Moscato. When someone tells me a wine was “sweet”, what they usually really mean is that the wine was fruity. As wine is made from grapes, it is nearly impossible to find a non-fruity wine; it’s just a matter of how fruity it is.


Many wines can be described not only by their body, but also by the fruit flavors they contain.
Some of the fruit flavors most commonly found in wines are:

-RED FRUIT: cherry, raspberry, strawberry
-BLACK FRUIT: plum, blackberry, currant
-CITRUS FRUIT: grapefruit, kumquat, lemon, lime
-ORCHARD FRUIT: apple, pear, peach, apricot
-TROPICAL FRUIT: kiwi, mango, pineapple, passion fruit


In addition to fruit, wines often carry other flavors, stemming from the soil the grape is grown in, or the vessel the wine is aged in. Other flavors commonly found in wines are:

-tobacco -raisin/prune -chocolate -anise -musk
-leather -jam -vanilla -nuts -clay
-pepper -honeysuckle -toffee -grass -yeast
-hay/straw

Let Your Senses Do the Tasting

Smells are the quickest way to trigger what is known as “sensory memory” and will help you identify what your palate prefers. When you smell and taste wine, you call upon a sensory memory revealing some of the flavors present…an apple orchard, the smell of fresh-cut grass.
So, the next time you taste a wine, close your eyes and let the memories come to you…the first bite of a juicy ripe plum, the smell of sweet honey, maybe it’s your grandfather’s cigars on a hot summer afternoon, or his old, well-worn leather jacket.


JEN RYAN is a self-taught wino whose first sip of wine was a trockenbeerenauslese at age 10. Her world has been better since. Visit her Thursdays through Sundays at Vintage Grape, 1479 Third Avenue (between 83rd & 84th). www.vintagegrape.net