The entire worldwide wine industry has been shaped both by advances in winemaking technology and viticulture. It has also been shaped profoundly by the reports of wine writers, who are known to have their personal preferences. Scores and descriptions by The Wine Spectator or The Wine Advocate have so moved markets that many winemakers change course to accommodate those professional tastes that garner the high scores. The difference between a 92 point wine and a 93 point can result in a huge profit differential for the winery. (Here we rate wines as recommended, highly recommended, or very highly recommended and do not publish reviews of wines we can't recommend to our readers.)
Winemakers Own Words
If you ignore the actual point scores awarded to wines under review, you are likely to find a fairly limited number of actual descriptors—those words that attempt to describe the special qualities of a wine. We thought you might like to take a peek at what winemakers say about their wines, positive and negative, when they aren't hawking them to consumers (as in back labels).
Around 1990 a group of winemakers who specialized in Zinfandel was assembled by David Darlington, who consequently published the proceedings in his book Zin: The History and Mystery of Zinfandel.
The tasters included Rod Bergland (Swan), Darrell Corti (Corti Brothers), Paul Draper (Ridge), Charlie Myers (Harbor), Doug Nalle (Nalle), Joel Peterson (Ravenswood) and Charles Sullivan (wine historian).
The wines included were most of the legendary California Zinfandels from 1941 into the 1980s. The youngest were around five years old, the oldest nearly 50 years. Here are the words used by these iconic winemakers to describe the wines, tasted blind.
On the depreciative side, they used these words:
- Acetic
- Alcoholic
- Astringent
- Bitter
- Chalky
- Cooked
- Dusty
- Faded
- Flat
- Gassy
- Kelpy
- Old
- Overripe
- Resinous
- Rough
- Senile
- Soft
- Sour
- Thin
- Vegetal
Those were the words that were used to describe the flaws. It's not often that we see wine writers describing wines as senile, rough, cooked, rough or faded. But remember that most of these wines were the products of age and some were clearly on the decline. Nevertheless, there were many laudatory descriptors used, even for decades-old Zinfandels. Here they are:
- Aromatic
- Beautiful
- Complex
- Delicious
- Elegant*
- Exciting
- Fresh
- Fruity
- Full
- Fun-to-Drink
- Herbal
- Historic
- Intense
- Interesting
- Lively
- Mouth-Filling
- Pretty
- Rich
- Ripe
- Round
- Sensuous
- Smooth
- Solid
*The term elegant is used frequently to describe wines leaning towards dryness, complexity, and low alcohol. This, in contrast to rich, which describes the current style of Zinfandel favored by many wine reviewers and the general public. The notion of Zinfandels in the 15%-16% alcohol-by-volume range would have been considered highly off the mark twenty years ago. And almost everyone agrees that these monster Zins are not easily paired with food—which is supposed to be the raison d-être for wine.
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