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04/19/2006 - Vocabulary |
Karen McNeil, author of “The Wine Bible” wrote about wine vocabulary in Cooking Light (March 2006). She mentioned a student who described a wine as being like a lime-green trapezoid. The student was a graphic artist by training, and every time she tasted a wine, she envisioned an image, shape, and color. The wine tasted was, in fact, underripe, hard, and angular, with lots of green pepper flavors. By using her own “language,” she was able to accurately describe the wine to herself and remember it. When McNeil was first learning about wine, she used celebrities as an easy way to remember wines and grape varieties: Chardonnay = Marilyn Monroe (soft, blond, round and fleshy) Sauvignon Blanc = Jamie Lee Curtis (taut, lean, sassy) Zinfandel = Arnold Schwarzenegger (muscular, full-bodied, thick) I really enjoy hearing about methods that people use to help them keep wine in categories and accurately in their memories. And by the way, I now have a wine in stock by Troon Vineyards, a Zinfandel whose label reads “the best zin ever made, period.” This definitely is an |