«Have You Tried to Describe the Aroma and Failed?». Perception, Language, and Cultural History

The way we describe wine aromas and our tasting experiences has changed enormously throughout the last century.This change has resulted in the need for an extremely rich and sophisticated lexicon, much of which has been borrowed from that of fruit. In this transition this lexicon has essentially become a systematic lexicon (cf. Wine aroma wheel). This operation cannot be understood and described without identifying the transformations that have accompanied our use of wine and the words that accompany it. Indeed, wine has gone from being an energizing substance capable of helping us maintain our psychophysical balance, according to the dictates of galenic medicine, to a substance capable of galvanizing our hedonism.