Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeCat Pee, Fly Spray and the Turnoff of Vile Wine Descriptions
by Jim Gordon
How are wine drinkers supposed to understand the language that wine writers use to convey the tastes of wines they like when some of it comes from way out in left field?
Even winemakers themselves compare their creations to things as extremely unpalatable as cat pee and insecticide. What do you think when you read a tasting note for a Sauvignon Blanc that alludes to “cat pee,” for instance?
I touched on this in a recent post, Great Time to Be a Riesling Enthusiast. I noted that a couple of the Rieslings I liked at the Wine Enthusiast’s Toast of the Town event in San Francisco (and coming to Atlanta, Chicago and New York in the next five weeks) had an assertive aroma of petrol. That’s an Anglicized way of saying they smelled like diesel fumes, but in a good way, seriously.
One of my tenets as a wine writer is to not use jargon that the average, educated, non-enthusiast consumer wouldn’t understand. So I avoid calling grapes “fruit” like everyone in the West Coast industry does. I just call them grapes. I don’t say that a wine has a “nose” and “palate” or at least very rarely. People have noses and palates. Wines have aromas and flavors.
It follows that I don’t want to call that distinctive aroma of dry Riesling when grown in a very cool climate “petrol” or “kerosene” or “diesel” even if some sommeliers and masters of wine do. I think it’s this kind of wine-speak that makes us into wine snobs and laughable eccentrics in the eyes of many.
But I don’t know a good way around the jargon when it comes to Riesling, which I love. I’ve tried out “smoky,” which doesn’t sound so terrible, and “lemon zest,” thinking about the bitter component of zest which isn’t all that tasty by itself but does make for some great dishes. But neither of these really nails it.
At the San Francisco tasting, one Riesling pourer offered “mineral.” But that doesn’t fly, because numerous other wines are said to have mineral qualities and the aroma I’m speaking about is only found in Riesling. Besides, mineral is an often abused term in wine.
I couldn’t help bringing up the petrol subject yesterday when I tasted with Western Australian winemaking pioneers Peter and Elizabeth Pratten, of Capel Vale winery. They are re-introducing some very nice wines to the US market with a new importer after a lapse of several years.
Peter poured an absolutely intriging single-vineyard dry Riesling, the Capel Vale Whispering Hill Vineyard Mount Barker 2007. They grow it in possibly the coolest part of Western Australia about 50 miles inland from the Antarctic-chilled Southern Ocean.
This 12-percent alcohol wine showed the unmistakable petrol smell, with yes, some lemon zest and crisp Pippin apple flavors to go with it, a graceful balance and lively finish. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until next year for the Riesling to be in circulation in the US, but they brought two tasty Chardonnays that are being introduced this year: one unwooded and one lightly oaked and elegant. They also are releasing two Shirazes, an affordable model that tasted like Guigal Cotes du Rhone from a ripe year (quite good), and a more sophisticated and somewhat more expensive cool-climate Shiraz that I thought should age well.
So I asked Peter what term he uses for the calling card aroma of cool-climate Riesling. “Well, in public we call it minerale,” he said, using a Latin pronunciation, “but around the winery we call it fly spray.”
Fly spray? And then I remembered the smell of Raid. It IS a bit like the Riesling perfume. But it’s a worse metaphor than petrol. Who wants to even imagine putting some fly spray in a glass and bringing it to one’s nose, let alone drinking it?
I’m not going to be able to bring myself to use that descriptor except for this one time in this blog. But you have to admit that it’s an honest description, not a marketing message that his VP Sales urged him to repeat. I doubt if it will ever appear in any Capel Vale brochures or on their website.
That’s as it should be. Peter Pratten wasn’t blowing smoke or trying to shape my perception of his wine in any strategic way. If Riesling smells like fly spray to him, so be it. How I describe Riesling is my problem.
But it would help to know what you think. What kinds of descriptions/tasting notes are the most helpful to you, and what kinds are the biggest turnoffs?
Filed under: Connoisseurship, Critics/Competitions
7 Comments
7 Responses to “Cat Pee, Fly Spray and the Turnoff of Vile Wine Descriptions”
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April 15th, 2008 at 1:11:56 PM
I often opt for the more general term “chemical”, as it doesn’t evoke a particular undesired substance but still tends to get the point across. It’s far from ideal, but may be an option.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:34:12 PM
As a budding wine writer myself, I find it most useful when some of my sommelier friends break down a particular aroma for me. For example, when I say ‘banana cream pie” in a chardonnay, it’s an aggregate of the phenols extracted from the skins/stems, the butter/caramel aromas resulting from the malolactic fermentation, and the vanillans imparted by the oak treatment. For me, this breakdown is beneficial. When I chat with friends that aren’t so into wine, saying it smells like banana cream pie is a much more effective way of communicating. Describing the aggregation of aromas, the holistic bouquet is much easier for the average wine drinker to consume – this is part of why Gary Vaynerchuk is so popular. People can imagine what the smell of a “tree trunk sized chunk of black licorice, melted down in a microwave” is like, rather than traditional description of black licorice and oak spices. Just my halucination!
April 15th, 2008 at 1:52:40 PM
Jim, you’re spot on. This business of coming up with appropriate aroma and taste descriptors can be tricky. However, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon for wine critics to try and come up with specific fruits, etc. to describe tastes and smells, and I think it’s an American thing. In the old days, the Brits (who basically invented wine writing) had a whole different paradigm for writing about wine. Professor Saintsbury wrote beautifully about his favorite wines but not the way we do these days. He described wines as “delicate” — “perfect” — “injured” — “humble” — “distinguished” — “beautiful” — “coarse” — “potent” — “rapidly withering” — “super-excellent [this was an 1893 Latour] and so on. But nothing about raspberries, currants, etc., much less cat pee!
April 15th, 2008 at 10:55:32 PM
RE: Steve, these descriptors of Saintsbury, which focus on style and character, not exact tastes, should, I think, be the most important focus of a wine description. An accurate description should focus mainly on a wine’s affect or personality, maybe in theory 70 percent of such effort, then linking that to notes of particular taste expressions. For one, when you describe affect or personality of a noun, – proper or otherwise – the descriptors are limitless in their shading. It is all too easy to find two wines of different character where tasters noted nearly identical simple fruit flavors.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:25:49 PM
I use a product called the Essential Wine Tasting Guide that I bought at Peller Estates (Niagara-OTL) tasting room a couple of years ago. It lists hundreds of descriptors in a cheat sheet style format which is only the size of a credit card. Not only does it cover the aromas but also all the tactile descriptors used for tannins, alcohol, sweetness etc.
I highly recommend it.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:46:42 PM
There is a brand of SV named Cat’s Pee on a goosberry buch from New Zealand. It was fairly good.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:29:55 PM
Steve and Sean, I completely agree with both of you. Simply being able to identify specific taste profiles of the wine (type of fruit, etc) doesn’t describe the full experience of the wine. And then there’s the type who forgo tasting notes altogether and only take note of the scores. Parker might be the most influential critic in the world, but its the English who’ve mastered the art of wine writing.