No, dear reader, there aren’t any blueberries in the bottle

Wine critics use fruit and other flavours as descriptors in order to help readers pick wines they like

When I first turned my part-time hobby horse of wine loving into a full-time rodeo, we lived in a strange world of wine descriptions.

Most of the critical verbiage was derived from British wine wits who eschewed talking about specific fruit and loved words such as “shy” and “hollow” and “closed.”

I began using fruit and actual taste suggestions after burrowing through 30 Chardonnays, made virtually identically, and grasping at words to distinguish each from the other.

One woman actually asked me if a merlot actually contained blueberries when I wrote that as a suggestion.

No, dear readers, the fruit or nuts or limestone are hints the wine gives off. However blueberry is a classic signal a wine could be merlot.

I found readers also sensed various fruit or veggie or natural aromas and flavours, and could identify with what they liked and so know the wine I was reviewing may appeal to them.

I was chatting with one of my readers recently, and she confessed she hates the taste of licorice as well as bell pepper and eucalyptus so when she sees these de- scriptors in my review she makes sure to avoid the wine.

My personal bias makes me adore a red wine with cassis (black currants) overtones or graphite (pencil shavings) and in whites, butter and coconut.

Of course such descriptors usually mean loads of new oak, so the wines I love tend to be too expensive for humble moi to afford. There is no justice!

But if I encounter these traits in in- expensive wines, depending on added other seductive factors, then I am in heaven.

Thank goodness most of the wine critic fraternity has also boarded the taste bandwagon I ride when doing reviews.

As far as closed, or dumb, or shy goes, I still use such terms, but only when tasting with older judges.

One of these days I might share with readers what that trio of words and a vanished generation of terms means, some retro is amazingly useful.

Our theme today is Italian wines and a rosé newly arrived at Vintages. stimmell@sympatico.ca

As far as closed, or dumb, or shy goes, I still use such terms, but only when tasting with older judges