Don't Read Between the Lines In our reviews of more than 1,500 wines in each issue of the International Wine Cellar, we try to use clear, understandable, jargon-free English to describe the wines in (y)our glass.&nbsp; We don’t anthropomorphize wines

and we avoid esoteric, or overly personal, descriptors, which mean something to

the writer but not much to the reader. 



But even clear

English can signify different things to different readers, depending on their

own experience level, their openness to new taste experiences, and the

preconceived notions they bring to wine appreciation.







One example:

words like herbs, herbal, green.&nbsp;&nbsp;Many

consumers new to wine appear unwilling to accept red wines with anything

suggesting "greenness," even though long-time collectors know that

herbal elements in a young wine are often the precursors of complex aromatic

and flavor elements that develop with bottle age (such as tobacco, black tea,

tar, forest floor or cedar in classic claret).&nbsp;

Even in very young wines, a note of herbs (dried, medicinal, botanical,

wild) can provide complexity, character and lift to a wine. Whether these

elements are owing to the presence of garrigue, the wild and pungently

herbal/spicy brush that dots rocks and hillsides along France's Mediterranean

coast, or the analogous fynbos influence found in so many South African wines,

they are reflections of their sites and contribute to the distinctiveness of

the local wines.&nbsp;



Herbaceous,

or—more extreme still—vegetal:&nbsp; now

that’s another matter.&nbsp; I use these

descriptors for wines that are farther along the green spectrum.&nbsp; A wine that tastes like canned asparagus or

green beans isn’t fun to drink, and if it’s a red wine it probably wasn’t made

from sufficiently ripe grapes.&nbsp; But

herbal does not mean vegetal.







And then there’s

another category of scents used by wine tasters: leather, gamey, wild.&nbsp;(“sauvage” is the way

the French describe these wines).&nbsp; If

you’re the kind of taster who prizes fruit above all else, you might not

welcome meatiness in your wine, but these are not necessarily pejorative

descriptors.&nbsp; Some of the best northern

Rhone syrahs have a gamey quality, as do many of Italy’s Montepulciano wines.







When the English Burgundy

merchant Anthony Hanson wrote that “great Burgundy smells like shit” in the

first edition of his landmark book, Burgundy, in 1982, he was . . . mostly off

base.&nbsp; Wines with strong barnyard or

leathery scents were typically flawed wines, due to the spoilage yeast

brettanomyces or to the use of old, dirty barrels.&nbsp; A lot of Burgundies tasted like that before

producers got more serious about hygiene in the cellars.&nbsp; And yet:&nbsp;

great Burgundy, as it evolves in bottle, can show a distinctly decadent

quality that aficionados appreciate.&nbsp; So

don’t automatically be afraid of wines with a bit of rudeness. Although every

taster has a different olfactory threshold, notes of roasted game birds or

animal fur can contribute complexity to a wine. 



To a great

extent, reactions to freighted descriptors are a generational thing.&nbsp; My wino buddies, who mostly began tasting

seriously about 30 years ago, can handle an herbal quality or a hint of

something feral in their wines.&nbsp; In

contrast to some wine lovers of more recent vintage, they’re not put off by

bracing acidity in a white wine, or by wines that privilege minerality and soil

character over obvious primary fruit.&nbsp;

Flawed wines are rarely the ones I’d want to bury in my cellar, but

wines with personality are another matter altogether.

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