Catching up with the new wine jargon

I was listening to a couple of folks in the Wine Cellar the other day and heard some very interesting new wine jargon.

I guess that I have been using the same old adjectives to describe wine and these new descriptors seem pretty cool. Let me share with you some of these new terms and how they relate to wine attributes.

€¢ Racy: This is a term used to describe a wine that has very forward fruit and gobs of finish. "Racy" wines are slick wines that slide down the throat very easily and maintain a velvety and silky finish.

€¢ Mineral: This is a very interesting wine term associated with white wines. I have a very tough time explaining this term to you, but the best idea is that this wine would display hard, perhaps calcium and stony qualities, in the wine. We see this type of taste sensation in dry wines from the Loire Valley and many of the Washington state white wines. We rarely feel this mineral flavor component in red wines.

€¢ Steamy: Well, here's a good one. I know the term "hot," but "steamy" is a new one on me. "Steamy" wines are wines that are heavy in alcohol and also have a vegetal quality to them as well. We see this in the over alcohol Sauvignon Blanc wines that have herbal flavors, as well as high alcohol.

€¢ Punchy: If a wine is indistinct — that is, without varietal character and is a red wine — the term "punchy" is now being used. This term had been associated with fruit juice flavors in wine, but the "punch" label drives the quality statement even lower. To say that a wine is "punchy" is to give us the opinion that the wine lacks class and structure.

€¢ Banger: This is a wine with a huge punch of alcohol! I laughed Saturday when a young wine guy used this term when describing an unusually high-alcohol Zinfandel.

€¢ Sissy: These wines are wines that have the attributes of Wrigleys Juicy Fruit gum. These are the "no thinking" wines that slip down like Kool-Aid and simply get one dipsy without wondering what it was that got you there. Sissy wines are the low-alcohol, run-of-the-mill Rieslings from Germany and the fruit bomb Gewerztraminers from the Central Valley that display nothing but spice and alcohol.

€¢ Wower: Yep, this is an outrageously good wine. I actually heard of a young wine judge using this wine term as a descriptor when giving a gold medal to the wine and the term has stuck in the wine judging circuit. I actually like this wine term quite a bit and I think I'm storing it in my wine lexicon.

€¢ Upside down: Evidently, a wine that is considered "upside down" is a wine that has components or flavors that are not expected for its varietal. An example of this would be a very herbal Chardonnay or a very acidic Port. These kinds of wines are considered completely foreign from what is to be expected from the grape listed on the label.

€¢ Dumb: This is a wine that has not clearly defined what it is. For example, if we are tasting a wine that has been recently bottled and is not showing any clear signs of what it is, this wine is considered "dumb." We see this in new red wines that are in shock from bottling or have been shaken or shipped great distances. It simply takes time for these wines to "come around."

Well, there you have them. Use them with care and caution! See you next week!