Unusual descriptors

[Jenise]

I read so many tasting notes, it's hard to surprise me any more. But this morning on CT, someone managed that. A 2022 Pewsey Vale Riesling from Australia had this: "Petrol, tennisballs, gooseberry, good acid but not screaming."

I am guessing that someone who plays a lot of tennis has that experience of opening a fresh can and getting that scent. Entirely valid and amusing to contemplate.

Anyone run into any other compelling descriptors of late?

[David M. Bueker]

Fresh tennis balls is the latest attempt to pin down the infamous “petrol” descriptor.

[Jenise]

Fresh tennis balls is the latest attempt to pin down the infamous “petrol” descriptor.

News to me! But then he probably wouldn't get my 'coconut' thing.

Just yesterday or so I started thinking about popular descriptors of the past. Like 'garrique' in wines of the Southern Rhone, which isn't as ubiquitous as it once was though the scent is still there (and why I was thinking about it). Or 'green bean' to describe Sauvignon Blancs, which of course you would never do!, for the non-cat-pee gooseberryless made popular by the New Zealand invasion.

Well, I just invented one, for a note on a 2002 Brun L'Ancien VV:

Coprolite. (n., < ancient Greek "kopros," faeces, + "lithos," stone.) A fossilized turd. Also adj., "coprolitic," used figuratively to describe a once mildly barnyardy bottle of wine from which, over the years, all the flesh and structure has disappeared, leaving behind only the poop.

[David M. Bueker]

Well, I just invented one, for a note on a 2002 Brun L'Ancien VV:

Coprolite. (n., < ancient Greek "kopros," faeces, + "lithos," stone.) A fossilized turd. Also adj., "coprolitic," used figuratively to describe a once mildly barnyardy bottle of wine from which, over the years, all the flesh and structure has disappeared, leaving behind only the poop.

Not so freshly dead!

[David M. Bueker]

Fresh tennis balls is the latest attempt to pin down the infamous “petrol” descriptor.

News to me! But then he probably wouldn't get my 'coconut' thing.

Just yesterday or so I started thinking about popular descriptors of the past. Like 'garrique' in wines of the Southern Rhone, which isn't as ubiquitous as it once was though the scent is still there (and why I was thinking about it). Or 'green bean' to describe Sauvignon Blancs, which of course you would never do!, for the non-cat-pee gooseberryless made popular by the New Zealand invasion.

When Jancis Robinson did her BBC/PBS series "Wine Course" she said for Sauvignon Blanc "cat pee on a gooseberry bush."

Jancis Robinson used that description in her book Vines, Grapes, and Wines, too. I thought it an excellent description for under-ripe sauvignon blancs. At the other end of the SB spectrum are the overripe, grassy wines. They remind me of the hay infusions we used to use in Biology lab.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

Jancis Robinson used that description in her book Vines, Grapes, and Wines, too. I thought it an excellent description for under-ripe sauvignon blancs. At the other end of the SB spectrum are the overripe, grassy wines. They remind me of the hay infusions we used to use in Biology lab.

Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, "grassy" used to fall on the conopy-shaded, ripe but not overripe side. Full sunlight and ripeness foster citrus in SB, don't they?

Jancis Robinson used that description in her book Vines, Grapes, and Wines, too. I thought it an excellent description for under-ripe sauvignon blancs. At the other end of the SB spectrum are the overripe, grassy wines. They remind me of the hay infusions we used to use in Biology lab.

Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, "grassy" used to fall on the conopy-shaded, ripe but not overripe side. Full sunlight and ripeness foster citrus in SB, don't they?

Yes, and tropical fruit notes, too.

A popular wine descriptor in South Africa is 'fynbos', (fine bush) the native flowery scrub land in the Cape.

Some years ago my son joined a group of girls from Johannesburg for a tasting at a Cape winery. When the Sauvignon Blanc was poured they were told it should taste like gooseberries. The girls asked what were gooseberries. The pourer told them gooseberries are hard smooth round small orange fruits.

My son was confused because we have gooseberry bushes in our garden and they grow large soft hairy green oval fruits. The wineries had read British wine experts who used the gooseberry descriptor as that fruit is common here. But it is not much seen in South Africa, they call physalis 'gooseberry' and believe that's what the experts mean, and they have convinced themselves that SB tastes like physalis.

I have no idea what tennis balls smell like when new.