What wine experts and book critics can learn from each other

Independent bookstores could hire book sommeliers and upmarket restaurants could get book reviewers to write their wine menus. (Representational image: Camille Brodard via Unsplash)

Those who write about wine have marvellous imaginations. At least that’s the conclusion one comes to after glancing at some tasting notes.

A Tuscan wine is described as one that “delivers loads of ripe, sweet, chocolate coated berries, cocoa and fennel”. A Burgundy has a profile that is “elegantly styled, medium bodied, citrus, stone and butterscotch”. A potion from Provence “coats your palate with fruit, rocks and stones that come in waves that build in intensity”.

A more extravagant description comes from wine writer Andrew Jefford. Of a sparkling wine, he writes that it is “a honeycomb of light, chased about by dragons, centaurs and mermaids imagined by lost stone carvers”. Try swallowing that.

Seemingly perturbed by similar pronouncements over the years, Frederic Brochet, then a PhD student at the University of Bordeaux, planned a sneaky little experiment in 2001. He asked over 50 unsuspecting connoisseurs for their reactions to two glasses of wine, one red and the other white.

The wine experts praised the red one for its “jamminess”, and discovered notes of “crushed red fruit”. However, both the glasses contained the same white wine, one of which had been tinted with food colouring. Not one of the wine pundits was able to spot this.

Book critics, too, have often been accused of using words and phrases that are cliched and meaningless. Many of these find their way into book blurbs. If one debut is “a triumph of the human spirit”, another is “unflinching and pitch-perfect”. If one memoir is “harrowing and lyrical”, another is “darkly comic and written in luminous prose”.

Fortunately, such reviewers have not yet been subject to tests of capability. When it comes to the social sciences in general, however, New York physics professor Alan Sokal famously wrote a paper in 1996 that he stuffed full of pretentious post-modern jargon. He submitted this to an established cultural studies journal, and waited to see what would happen. The journal went ahead and published it.

Clearly, the need of the hour is for oenophiles and book critics to bolster their reputations. Why, the future of the civilised world may depend on it. Here’s a modest proposal: those who write about wine and those who review books should swap vocabularies. It’s a simple, efficient manoeuvre that would give both professions new ways to wax eloquent about their likes and dislikes.

Let’s say a group of distinguished, bearded experts is asked for views on a fruity yet dry wine. After rolling it around their tongues in the recommended manner, they could gravely look up and say: “Deceptively simple. A thought-provoking tour de force.” In the same vein, if a book reviewer had to churn out a snappy review of a murder mystery before midnight, he could write: “Noticeably acidic and with a chewy texture, but with hints of sweetness in the finish.”

Booksellers and upmarket restaurants could also get into the act. Independent bookstores can hire book sommeliers to approach a customer browsing the shelves and say: “I think you’ll find that this pairs well with the fruity, refined romance novel you purchased last week”. Wine menus could describe a bottle of plonk that the management wants to promote as “a nuanced and luminous meditation that is unputdownable”.

The possibilities are endless. Of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, you could write: “It’s a produce of 1922, which was an excellent year for vintage volumes.” And of a Cabernet Sauvignon, you could say: “Haunting and powerful, this is the work of a vineyard at the height of its powers.”

Roald Dahl (Carl Van Vechten via Wikimedia Commons)

At least one writer would have problems with this approach. In 1988, Roald Dahl wrote a letter to a wine appreciation magazine in which he said that the “extravagant, meaningless similes” used to describe wine were “tommyrot”. Wine, he emphatically said, “tastes primarily of wine”.

If he was wrong about this, he went on, there was only one conclusion. “The chateaux in Bordeaux have begun to lace their grape-juice with all manner of other exotic fruit juices, as well as slinging in a bale or two of straw and a few packets of ginger biscuits for extra flavouring. Someone had better look into this.” The man has a point.

In his wine-loving household, Dahl concluded, such language in reviews was a source of ridicule. “We sit around reading them aloud and shrieking with laughter.”

Delicately stepping away from these views for the moment, one hopes that you have found this piece crisp and delicately balanced. You should have been able to detect notes of warmth along with hints of tartness, n'est-ce pas?