Lesson plan: Wine language

What words do we describe what’s in our glass? What kinds of language do we become fluent in, adopt, and deploy in order to talk about wine?

If you’re a person working in wine professionally, this probably feels both like it matters more, and varies more situationally, than it does for most people.

The way you describe a wine might be analytical, using any number of grids or wheels designed for blind tasting or critical evaluation.

It might be in the context of tasting with a sales rep to decide whether you’d like to make a buying decision, or tasting with a guest at a bar to see if it was what they wanted to drink.

It might be evocative and personal, a shorthand to aid sense memory and connect a wine to something only you’ve experienced.

It might involve a bit of salesmanship: painting a picture, setting a scene, making a joke, pitching a wine based on somebody’s moon and rising sign or their favorite animal or a song from a band they love. It might involve pairing it with a food on your menu, or an energy at the table, or a moment.

In every case, though, it’s an act of communication. You’re translating to another person, even when that person is yourself. And that means adjustment: cultural reference points, what foods get classed as ‘comfort’, what fruits grow in your region. It has to make sense to you, but it has to be relatable to somebody else.

The game below is adapted from an activity I created for daytime staff at a café that also sold wine. Staff were struggling to concisely describe wines by the glass, and asking for tasting notes—asking, in other words, for language to use to talk about wines with guests.

Rather than give them drop lines for BTG wines (“tart black cherry, baking spice”) I used it as an opportunity to play together with wine description and decide as a group what worked, and what didn’t.

Anybody who’s ever learned a language they didn’t grow up fluent in knows that it’s easier to recognize and understand than it is to produce words out of thin air.

Below is a downloadable .pdf with a deck of 88 printable cards and rules for the game. I recommend printing the cards on colored cardboard paper or thick cardstock for maximum replayability.

I also recommend leaving time 10-15 minutes for feedback, questions, and discussion after playing, and printing a set of blank cards and inviting players to add one card to the deck at the end of each play session.

You might vote on any cards to remove from the deck after playing, especially references that aren’t landing and seasonal cues that are out of sync.

Post-Activity Questions

What was your favorite match between a description card and a wine? Your least favorite?

Which of these do you think would work the best for a guest in this space and why?

Some of these descriptions focused on traditional fruit-based tasting notes, some on texture or structure, some on painting a picture or setting a scene, some on pairings with food or with moments, and some on jokey cultural references. Were there certain types of description that spoke more powerfully to you, or seemed more effective?

If you could write a new card of your own for one of these wines, what would it be?

(Was this useful? Did you play this game at a staff training or with friends at home? Consider supporting the project and continuing wine education materials via our patreon!)