For many wine students around the world, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), a global organization originally founded in the UK, provides the industry gateway.
The courses generally involve some variant of the Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine, a laminated card with a grid depicting various categories to describe a wine's appearance, aroma, acidity, tannin, body, length and flavors.
When it comes to a wine's appearance, students are given various options. For whites, it's either lemon, gold, amber or brown. For reds, it's purple, ruby, garnet or tawny. If that white looks more akin to clear acacia honey, gold it is. If that red looks more the color of old London brick, then its tawny.
The reins loosen slightly when it comes to the aromatics. Terms like apple, pear, gooseberry and grape are used to describe green fruit, while for tropical; the range is banana, lychee, mango, melon, passion fruit and pineapple. However, what is suggested has the distinct air of being what used to be readily available at British supermarkets, current times accepted.
Although Britain does have a fleeting history with winemaking – largely tied to shifts in climate – for the large chunks of time Britain has not been producing wine it has become an expert in the countries that do. Alongside industry leaders like the WSET, many British critics and writers also hold considerable sway, further influencing the language.
Erica Taylor, head of operations at South African Sommeliers Association (SASA) based in Cape Town, says it's a distinctly British and American to "speak of lemon, lime, strawberries, and blackberries. That is how you are taught to write."
Spencer Fondaumiere, chairman of SASA, agrees: "It is an imperfect system where study material tells you what the common descriptors of cultivars are. You memorize these and use them in your everyday wine interactions, without properly grasping them. Meanwhile, your memory bank is full of references that resonate with the flavors but you are shy or unsure to use them."
Fondaumiere would also add that the language surrounding wine can also be fairly "Eurocentric, you need to learn to spell and pronounce French and Italian words with relative complexity without speaking a word of the language".
Apples and oranges
For many around the world who don't have European diets, sticking to such rigid language can be inhibiting. As Fondaumiere explains: "How can you describe the wine to taste like cherries, when the closest thing you have come to a cherry is the processed macerated version that you get on pastries?"
Our US Editor W. Blake Gray voiced his own frustration. "My biggest complaint about British tasting notes is 'pear drop'. They use it all the time and I have no idea what it is. We also don't have gooseberries or red currants, though I have had them and know what they taste like."
As Taylor says: "When I'm writing my tasting notes, I use a word that's not something that I taste or eat on a daily basis. I know what it is; I know this is the word I'm supposed to use, even though it brings up little representation in my brain."
Taylor's own notes are deeply subjective. "The things I write for myself are very specific to me."
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