About once a year I like to get back to basics in wine education.

As many of you may know, I teach wine appreciation at Southern Oregon University through the School of Business. The class is open to anyone who is at least 21 years old. In the fall I will teach two sections of the class during the evening. And I know already what the first question on everyone's mind will be: How do we describe what we taste? So, let's explore this question a little with some good, basic wine education.

As you know, every industry has its own jargon that drives the point home and allows colleagues around any industry to communicate with some sort of common understanding. Our jargon, the pipeline to mutual communication, is split between science and art.

One can tell the proclivity of a "wine person" by the words they use when talking about the wine industry, or more specifically, particular wines. Many of the wines described in, for example, microbial instances, are spoken not in scientific terms (for the most part, unless in a lab) but rather adjectives, such as "skunky" or "tanky," reflecting what may be happening poorly in the bottle and, of course, have scientific roots detectable in the lab. This is true, particularly, during commercial wine judgings when there are enologists paired with wine writers where the scientists describe wines in scientific terms and writers in adjectives. It's pretty funny to experience, but illustrates the two sides of the beautiful coin of wine.

This is not to say that wine writers do not have a modicum of scientific understanding or that the scientists in the room cannot wax eloquently about wine. It comes down to, I think, the level of comfort.

I remember a funny moment at a commercial judging when one of the judges — a very well-spoken, well-educated liberal arts professor — was describing a particularly "foul" wine as smelling like "old creek bed" and "poopy diapers" with a hint of "burnt match." At the same time, across the table there was a microbiologist talking in the same breath about sulfur problems in this wine. They were speaking of the same wine — one gentleman was a poet and the other, a scientist.

Another time, some months earlier, there ensued a particular discussion about a wine which was really quite beautiful and one very lyrical gentleman was using words such as "beautiful structure, plum overtones, spiciness, length and balance." Again, across the table another gentleman was talking about the same wine using words to describe it such as "Superb PH, slightly steamed oak, cropped back fruit, little press juice and skin contact." Obviously, one person made and evaluated wine for a living and the other was a writer and evaluator of wine.

At one point in the evening, the educator accused the scientist of being a bit too "picky" and tearing down the wines to the minute structures and not seeing the wine as a "whole." In other words, the sum of its parts. Metaphorically speaking, he talked about the beauty of a rose as an entity, but once the petals are peeled and the rose so "terribly exposed," it lost much of its allure. He went on to admonish the other judge not to become so "scientific" in his approach which was, needless to say, a poor choice of word. The enologist, much to his credit, did not get baited. He responded, in sotto voce, that verbage needed some sort of "grounding" as well.

Anyway, this was one of the only times I can remember when the two sides of the coin clashed, and, thankfully, this does not happen often. I do know, however, that there are some "lyrical" wine judges who are reluctant to judge with strong-willed lab folks. This is true the other way around, as well.

My answer to students is always the same: to show both sides of the coin by reading wine "descriptions" from both points of view on a specific wine and let them figure out which of the descriptions work best for them, or perhaps a melding of the two.

I'm happy to say we have had in class many folks from our very fine SOU chemistry department, which allows the class to see both perspectives.