The Language of Wine Tasting

In this chapter we summarize an in depth analysis by two Bordeaux professors of enology of the methods that wine experts use to describe so many fragrances in wine. They studied the wine descriptions of thousands of wines by four wine experts to test the hypothesis that each used terms that might have some similar principles. The result was that they actually used a diversity of terms reflecting reflecting the distinct cognitive associations of each expert. The authors conclude that the main criterion for judging a wine for the experts was simple: was it “good” or not!