Discussing Wine to Excess

Discussing Wine to Excess

Would you rather talk about wine or drink it? (Owen Franken for The New York Times)

Years ago during a dinner party with friends, a lively discussion about the wines we were drinking led to comical descriptions like “hamster cages” and “dirty socks.” Then suddenly, everyone agreed that the wine we’d just opened had a distinctive hint of lavender.

As it happened, the hostess had just given me lavender oil to soothe a burn from a hot pan. We confessed and were promptly booed away from the table for spoiling a fine wine with our rogue scent.As someone who has always preferred to drink wine rather than talk about it, I was amused by a fun post over on the Serious Eats food blog. They are seeking readers’ favorite examples of “ridiculous wordspeak” when it comes to wine. Here are some examples so far:

“I still think discussing wine’s legs is silly sounding,” wrote reader bytemyfoot.

“I once ordered a wine solely because I was told there were ‘chocolate notes,’ ” wrote annerska.

“Describing it in terms of musk or pine or peat? I don’t know, it sounds like something you’d find on a forest floor rather than in a glass,” wrote dbcurrie.

“Pinot Noir having the aroma of ‘puppy’s breath,’ ” wrote Joddala.

The good news is that Serious Eats is holding a contest for the best suggestions, offering five copies of The Wine Snob’s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Oenological Knowledge (Broadway, 2008) to the winners. The bad news is the contest ends at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

So what examples do you have of ridiculous winespeak? If you enter the Serious Eats contest, be sure to come back to Well and share your entry with the rest of us.

From: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/discussing-wine-to-excess/
Discussing Wine to Excess