Lost in Translation

It is important to distinguish what we actually taste on the one hand and how we describe that taste on the other. And it must be true that any two people tasting a wine may actually taste different flavors or taste the same flavors but describe them differently.  

The problem with describing fruit flavors too precisely is that even if we assume the two tasters do in fact sense the very same flavors on the palate, very few people have a sophisticated ability to describe that flavor by reference to very particular fruits.  Once you get beyond the realm of fruits people encounter frequently - cherries, blackberries, strawberries, lemons limes, mangos and pineapples perhaps - you move into the space where really no one knows how a particular fruit is more nuanced in its flavor than the broad fruits with which we are all very familiar.     

But I may use a specific fruit name as a marker for a flavor. There are certain individual fruit flavors that in my mind I associate with certain grape varietals. I give this flavor the name of a particular fruit that correlates in my mind with what I taste. I use that fruit name as a marker for that taste if I taste a wine blind. For example, to my palate, Grenache has a unique red fruit flavor to which I have given a name - “Mulberry”. I don’t know so much about what mulberries actually taste like (I am told they can be red or black) but I associate the word with what I imagine/believe Mulberries taste like - a warm mellow soft luscious red fruit. And this is the flavor I sense when I taste mature Chateauneuf. “Mulberries” is like a shorthand for that very particular flavor. The chance you also associate what you taste in mature Grenache with “Mulberries” is almost nil. Likely you have chosen a different fruit to identify the flavor. So my marker word may as well be “Tarzan” for all the value it would serve communicating to you a unique and precise flavor.  “This tastes like mature Grenache normally does for me” is all my marker word describes and this is not useful to you. The choice of marker is entirely personal.   

I imagine every experienced taster has marker names in this way - including wine critics - but knowing the marker fruit name you give to what you taste is not helpful to me because it is not the same as mine. My Mulberries” may be your Damsons”. I concede my choice of marker fruit is not entirely arbitrary - “Mulberry” does tell you more about what I sense than if my marker word actually was “Tarzan” . I am communicating in the broadest terms some sense of what I am experiencing. Yet it would be more helpful for me to say I experience “a warm mellow luscious red fruit” than “mulberries”. My intended message in this post is that it is more helpful to use more generic descriptions than trying to identify flavors by reference to obscure seldom tasted fruits which are markers of that flavor only to you, however accurate that association may appear. Any benefit is lost in translation. 

And I suppose we should all eat a wider variety of fruits…

See also the brief post on “Colors”.

The picture above is of a Mulberry, as I am sure you supposed.