589 Wine Words

People who write for a living have specialties. They find ways to use the English language that would never occur to people outside their own field. The lingo that librarians use in their own publications is obtuse, overblown, obscure, and laced with computereze; not only does it keep outsiders from knowing what we talk about, it keeps other librarians cowed into silence.

But people who write about wine--now they can take the most ordinary words, make them sound terrific, and you still haven't a clue--at least if you're like me and know nothing about wine except that $3.99 a bottle probably isn't going to impress your guests.

In the Wall Street Journal Friday, I think, there was an article about which wines go with what foods. The writer actually subjected her/his family to the same meal several days so they could try different wines and be fair and balanced in their evaluation. My own wine vocabulary would be limited to taste words like acid, tart, sweet, sour and fruity. But, no. That's not how it is done. I wrote down the "wine words" used in this article.

clean
fresh
vibrant
lively
exciting
simple
richer
crisp
enliven
hints of
gravitas
clarity
balance
dramatic
clash

And the phrases, where one word wouldn't do.

not up to the task
clashed with
good counterpoint
didn't intersect
didn't engage
long, lovely finish

Wine vocabulary sounds much better than "mono- and cross-language domain-specific retrieval" or "data mining and knowledge discovery."