Surreal, Alluring, and Downright Weird: The Language of Wine Descriptors

For many of us, the first thing we do when picking up a bottle of wine is flip over to the back label to peruse the tasting notes. Often, this will provide a wealth of useful information, including which foods to pair the wine with. The descriptions can be quite colorful, too. Although, one might say that they can feel a bit misleading at times. You may be told that the wine contains hints of strawberries and vanilla, yet you fail to taste such notes when you are drinking it.

It’s fair to say that a majority of wine drinkers are somewhat bemused by the descriptions of their bottle. A study showed that experienced wine drinkers were put off by terms like “hollow,” “bouquet,” and “vegetal,” preferring instead to hear terms that had more logical realism. Others have pointed to descriptors like “freshly cut garden hose” and like a “freshly opened can of tennis balls” as nonsensical.

Finding logic in nonsense

And yet, there is artistry and value in wine descriptors, even when they don’t tell you exactly what you will smell and taste. To illustrate what we mean, we should go beyond the world of wine and talk about the meaning of nonsense and surrealism, i.e., finding logic in the illogical. The most famous literary example of this is in the works of Alice in Wonderland writer and poet Lewis Carroll. The author’s legacy remains everywhere today, from the works of Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss to games inspired by Alice in Wonderland, such as the Red Queen by Pragmatic Play. Carroll’s great artistic was to show meaning in the surreal and nonsensical.

Food and drink played an important role in Carroll’s works. Ironically, perhaps, the most famous descriptor was the DRINK ME label on the bottle Alice drinks, making her shrink. Of course, many of us would simply shrug if we saw this on the back label of our favorite plonk. But wine descriptors can tap into Carrollesque language and provide some meaning to the nonsensical.

Tractor tires, anyone?

We mentioned a can of tennis balls above, which was a real description taken from Ian Cauble’s SOMM documentary, but one of our favorites came from an obscure bottle of Romanian Pinot Grigio. The wine, from Transylvania (a decent wine-growing region with some underrated whites, so it’s famous for more than just Dracula), had the description of tasting like “crunched-up tractor tires.”

Now, there are a couple of ways you can interpret “crunched-up tractor tires.” First, you may dismiss the descriptor out of hand, believing that the producer simply wants to stand out or sound deliberately provocative. But if you taste the wine, there is some sense in the surreal Lewis Carroll-like description. It doesn’t taste like crunched-up tractor tires – who knows what they taste like? – but it is punchy, energetic, fruity, and acidic, but it feels a little different from the average Pinot Grigio. The description is surreal, but it’s not misleading.

In a sense, metaphors can be better descriptors than some of the commonly accepted wine terminology. Forest floor – sous bois to the French – for example, is a term that seems apt for certain Pinot Noirs, but it’s actually quite vague. Others, like minerally, are so broad in their meanings that the information is always going to be idiosyncratic to the person drinking it.

In the end, wine descriptors are often subjective. The expert describing the experience of drinking it may have a different perception than you. Some terms, such as sweet, acidic, tannic, and oaky, can be useful, but many others are vague and fluid. They all have their place in the artistry of the wine-drinking experience, even if some of us will be bemused at the taste of crunched-up tractor tires.