THOUGHTS ON THE LANGUAGE OF WINE

... and a bonus wine recommendation

I don’t speak French particularly well although I’ve studied the language off and on for years. I do, however, have a veritable dictionary of French words and phrases in my head so when I travel to France I sometimes sound like I’m reciting from a French dictionary. When I do manage to speak in complete sentences it’s always in the present tense and often about inanimate objects such as … furniture. I’ll explain.

Many years ago I had lunch with the parents of a famous New York chef at their house in Strasbourg at the suggestion of said famous chef who was born in Alsace. The chef warned me that his parents didn’t speak English but I thought he meant they spoke only a little English – or as well as I spoke French.

It turned out that they didn’t understand a single word of English so I did all the talking– in French- about our meal- and their house and their furniture. I admired their tableau, fauteuil, plats and the cunning pattern of their serviettes until I ran out of words and the three of us passed the last fifteen minutes or so of the meal in mutually grateful silence. I can only imagine what the parents said to their famous chef son after I left. I may or may not have been the first American wine journalist to join them for lunch but I might have been the last.

My French is so bad that I even had a famous Loire Valley winemaker who famously did not speak English command me to stop speaking French after I’d spent ten minutes asking him about his vineyards, his winemaking efforts and his barriques. “Stop! I will speak English,” he said. And yes, he said “Stop!” not “Arrêt!”

For non-oenophiles the language of wine can be as challenging, even embarrassing. Wine drinkers who don’t know how to “properly” talk about wine can be chastised by a snobby sommelier or wine retailer or a pretentious wine friend. I’ve seen this happen many times.

Beginning wine drinkers often seize upon simple words and use them over and over again trying to insert themselves into a conversation about wine. They might describe a wine as “nice” or “fruity” or “smooth.” Those words are all seem to have a clear meaning – but they don’t get drinkers very far when it comes to making their wine preferences understood. You could say they’re the “bonjour” and “au revoir” of the wine world. A wine merchant once told me “smooth” is the most useless wine word. “Your ‘smooth’ could be something completely different than mine,” he said.

Advanced wine drinkers tend speak in more complex terms- pinning down the exact taste of a wine by use of adjectives. I recall how a famous wine critic once described a wine from the Rhone thusly: The wine had “a beautiful sweetness in the mid-palate with a fragrant nose of scorched earth, black cherry and berry fruit, hints of pain grillé and licorice and cassis. It is full-bodied, opulent but structured and long.”

That reads to me like reciting types of furniture in French. My chosen language- applied to wine is a lot looser- a lot more fun- like one of my favorite writers, English novelist Kingsley Amis who could be delightfully crabby about wines he didn’t like- and hugely descriptive in a fun (if rather grouchy) way. Here’s Amis on a white Burgundy he disliked: “Closely resembling a blend of cold chalk soup and aluminum cordial with an additive or two to bring it to the color of children’s pee.”

Another Englishman, Stephen Potter, had an even better idea. He proposed that in order to make yourself understood all you need to do is simply infer something. In his terrific essay Winesmanship, Potter posits that effective winespeak should be conducted in broken sentences like “It has… don’t you think?” leaving the other person to fill in the blanks – or something completely nonsensical like “this wine has too many tramlines.” Auberon Waugh also believed in saying “wild and improbable” things about wine- he once compared a wine to a French railway station, another to a pair of ladies’ underwear. Even if it wasn’t very useful – it was, as Waugh said “much more amusing.”

Next time I’m in France I going to try speaking French this way too- though perhaps I will leave out references to underwear. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

FURTHER FUN: Readers who correctly identify the famous New York (Alsace-born) chef and/or the name of the famous Loire Valley winemaker will be recognized in next week’s Substack post.

Bonus Wine Recommendation (French of course!)

Famille Vincent Brut Crémant de Bourgogne $21

Sparkling wines made by the same method as Champagne (Methode Traditionelle) but made in French wine regions other than Champagne may be labeled Crémant and appended with the name of the region of origin. One of my consistent favorite Crémants is the Crémant de Bourgogne produced by the Vincent family of Chateau de Fuissé, which happens to make some of my favorite Pouilly-Fuissé wines as well.

According to Chateau de Fuissé, winemaker Antoine Vincent, his father decided to produce a sparkling wine a few decades ago. The wine was so well-received that he decided to make more but since he didn’t have the acreage for a larger production wine he entered into a partnership with a producer in Macon. Today the family produces around 40,000 bottles of this all-Chardonnay sparkling wine (and a range of affordable still wines) under the name Famille Vincent. Marked by notes of citrus and green apple, it’s light to medium bodied, crisp, refreshing and delightful to drink.