Tip of the Tongue

By W. Blake Gray
The words you use to describe a taste may actually change how you taste it.
Youre at an international dinner party, with friends from France, Italy, and China. Someone opens a
bottle of wine. After a sip, you say, Thats a big red, with strong blackberry and raspberry flavors. Its
delicious!
Your neighbors disagree with you on the verdict. The Chinese guest is confused by the description, while
the French and Italian guests are put off by the association of wine and fruit. Thats how it is with food
and wine: Different cultures relate differently to what they eat and drink. But there is something going
on here that is beyond personal preferences, because wine appreciation is not all in the taste buds.
Linguistics plays a considerable role.
In any research field, its hard to separate the influences of language and culture. This is particularly
difficult in food and wine, because what little research money is available has tended to go toward the
most practical applications, such as how to make better wine.
A key theory of linguistics, though, is that of linguistic relativity: The structure and syntax of a language
affect the way its speakers experience the world. So language itself, not just culture, might cause
speakers of different tongues to perceive the wine differently.
Dr. Robin Lakoff of the Berkeley linguistics department, one of the worlds leading scholars on this topic,
described the concept by comparing the ways in which German and French people speak about bridges.
The word for bridge in French is masculine, Lakoff said. The word for bridge in German is feminine.
Normally we think gender doesnt have a lot to do with meaning; a bridge is a bridge. But studies show
that French speakers said bridges are strong; they are powerful, Lakoff said. Germans were more
likely to talk about the delicacy of the cables or the artistic beauty of a bridge.
If our primary language has such a powerful effect on our perception of an object we see every day,
imagine its effect on something as ethereal as the taste of a wine.
The word for wine is masculine in gender in the languages of all major European wine-producing
countries. However, you can see the impact of gender in American wine reviews. Words like muscular
and powerful tend to be associated with the highest ratings from critics, while pretty and
elegantseemingly desirable qualities in a wineare rarely used on the very top-rated wines.
Consumers, too, display gender preferences in describing wines. In 2005, the Internet research
organization Wine Opinions of St. Helena surveyed U.S. consumers about their choices for terms used to
talk about cabernet sauvignon. Men preferred heavy and full-bodied; women wanted jammy fruit.
As an American English speaker and certified wine professional, I have been trained in part by Berkeley
alumna Ann Noble 70, who in 1984 developed an aroma wheel to standardize descriptions of
olfactory and taste sensations in wine.
The aroma wheel uses a comprehensive list of possible wine descriptors in 12 categories. The large
category of fruity, for example, leads to subcategories including tree fruit, dried fruit, berry, and citrus.
These in turn have specific subcategories such as apple, fig, cherry, and grapefruit. Other primary
categories include woody, nutty, herbaceous, and floral. The idea is that a taster, instead of saying, It
smells like perfume, will zero in on more exact sensations and say, It smells like orange blossom with a
hint of eucalyptus. Thus a reader who knows those scents can understand exactly what is meant in the
description.
Before Nobles breakthrough, English speakers tended to describe wines by comparing them with other
wines, as in The 1978 Cheval Blanc is most like the 72, though it has some characteristics of the 68.
Not only does this exclude novices who arent familiar with those vintages, but it doesnt really describe
the wine at all. Another common pre-Noble description, still popular with amateur critics, is to make
celebrity analogies. A famous one from a magazine called Wine X was Tastes like Brad Pitt stepping out
of the shower.
Like most sommeliers, I investigate each wine like a bloodhound, trying to tease out whether Im
smelling peach or apricot. Instead of Brad Pitt, I use approved aroma-wheel words such as sweaty,
tobacco, cloves, and wet wool. This fruit-bowl approach to describing wines reaches its
apotheosis in Robert Parker, a lawyer who became the worlds most influential wine critic.
Lets imagine three red wines: a typical Napa Valley wine; a French red wine from the Loire district; and
an Italian red from Campania. Parker would describe the fruits he tasted in these hypothetical wines,
but most importantly, he would give each a numerical rating on a 100-point scale. For many Americans,
thats all they need to know.
Its an attempt to re-scientize, Lakoff says. Nobody knows what nose means, or what terroir
means. But we all know what 94 means. We all agree that 94 is more than 93.
Back at the party, lets say I describe my Loire red as having herbal flavors, like artichoke or tea,
which dont sound as delicious to Americans as jammy, ripe blackberry and would almost certainly
lead to a score under 90 from Mr. Parker. But the French-speaking taster next to me might be
experiencing the same flavors entirely differently, says Dr. Mairi McLaughlin from the Berkeley French
department. In California, I associate wine with grapes, McLaughlin says. Drinking a wine in France,
youre imagining the place. In other words, while the American is thinking about smoke or citrus, the
French drinker is thinking about the regions of Burgundy or Bordeaux. American prose is much more
direct, she adds. The language in France is more metaphorical.
This is a typical Robert Parker review, of a California wine called Palazzo 2006: Reveals a sumptuous
perfume of white chocolate, fruitcake, black cherries, black currants, and subtle toasty oak. Displaying a
luscious texture, a broad, savory midpalate, and gorgeous length, it should drink nicely for 10 to 15+
years. In contrast, La Revue du vin de France is the most serious of Frances wine publications, but it
still has space for a review like this, of a Paul Beucher wine: Classic of an Alsatian-style pinot noir that
seduces by its tender side.
Perhaps my French friend will not be seduced by my American wine.
When I get to the Campania wine, I notice that it has much stronger acidity than the other two. As a
wine writer, I struggle every week with a way to make that wordaciditysound like a positive to my
American readers. Food friendly is one dodge, because the 2005 Wine Opinions survey found that the
second most negative descriptor for Americans is crisp or tangy with distinct acidity. (The worst
phrase to Americans was dry and tannic.)
The Italian speaker would be more likely to say acidic as praise, or even to confound his American
neighbor by describing the wine as sour while appearing to like it.
Sour in wine in English can be said to be a lack of ripeness, which is a negative, says Rachel Black,
director of the Boston University Gastronomy program and a frequent guest lecturer in Italy. In Italy its
not stigmatized. Theres not so much of a desire for sweetness. In contrast, Americans dislike sour so
much that it wasnt used frequently enough to even be included in the Wine Opinions survey.
Italian and French also share a grammatical construction that McLaughlin says has a huge impact on the
way their speakers think about wine.
In the United States, if a wine is called easily drunk, its generally thought of as a cheap wine, not at
the level of great wines. But in this quirky Italian and French syntax, the equivalent is the wine drinks
itself says McLaughlin. Its talking about the very nature of the wine, as opposed to the experience of
the drinker. And a wine that drinks itself is a very positive characteristicimagine laundry that does
itselfas opposed to the passive description easily drunk.
Our Chinese guest has been sitting quietly at the table, with his own thoughts about the wines. What
might they be? I asked Qingyun Ma, dean of the University of Southern California School of Architecture
and founder of a winery in China. To begin with, hes not thinking about raspberries and olallieberries,
which most Chinese have never tasted.
When Ma wants a Chinese person to have a positive impression of a wine, he uses words for taste
sensations, which often have no corollary in English. For example, it is important to talk about mouth
feel, because Chinese people take that very seriously in foodso much so that they can describe mouth
feel in ways that Americans have never even considered. There is a word, suan, that has a very specific
definition, Ma says. You could translate it like a spicy or chemical reaction in your mouth. But those
words cannot translate back into Chinese. You wouldnt want a wine to have suan, but you would want
to use very specific words about how it feels in the mouth. English speakers, though, are generally
limited to silky and smooth or the unpopular dry and tannic.
Linguistic relativity comes into play in many words that wineries of other countries use when selling
wines in China. Even if words like sweet and fresh translate directly into Chinese, the connotation is
different, with huge implications for how a wine is perceived. Sweet, for example, is not a positive
unless the speaker says where the sweetness comes from. But fresh, not a word often used for wine in
the United States, has different connotations in China.
The word xian, if you translate directly, would be new and fresh, Ma says. The word might not have a
flavor association, but, he says, xian in China has a very direct connotation to the origin. Its very
vibrant and healthy.
Lets say our Loire red is a few years old and has some of the secondary characteristics of age. We would
have to choose our words very carefully if we want our Chinese friend to try it.
If you say a wine tasted like leather, they dont want to put that in their mouth, Ma says. If you say
barnyard, they think of cow manure, and that would turn them off immediately. Yet both these terms
are widely used and are understood to be positive attributes by European wine connoisseurs, and to a
lesser extent by American ones as well.
Lets go back to the beginning of this story. I wrote: Thats a big red, with strong blackberry and
raspberry flavors. Its delicious! Our Chinese friend doesnt understand the fruits. Our French friend
wonders where the land is, and why those fruits are appealing. And our Italian friend may be bewildered
by the adjective big, which pops up in every American wine publication.
What do you mean by big? Lakoff asks. Its the same size as any other wine. What does it mean to
say a liquid has size?
I would love to end this article by describing a wine in such a way that the guests from all four countries
would understand. But not only are we not speaking the same language; we may not even be having the
same experience.
Now just imagine the fun when I pull out a New Zealand sauvignon blanc, frequently described in
England as having the aroma of cat pee. Perhaps Id better just let everyone taste it and keep my
description to myself.
W. Blake Gray and his wife, Mami Gray, wrote a Japanese-language wine book, California Winetopia. He
has also written extensively about wine, sake, and food in English for publications that include the San
Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, Wine Review Online, and Palate
Press. He lives in San Francisco.