---
title: Wine Dictionary - How to talk about wine
date: 2020-03-11T03:28:00+01:00
author: Salama
canonical_url: "https://choco.com/us/stories/wine-dictionary"
section: Story
---

# Wine Dictionary - How to talk about wine

How to describe wine

*Published: 2020-03-11*


When it comes to **wine** and its taste expression, you must rely on specific words. Just in case you needed some help with **words to describe wine** to result fancy in front of your customers, here is the [Choco](https://www.choco.com/) **wine dictionary** exclusively for restaurants.







The **Wine Aroma Wheel**, introduced by Ann C. Noble in 1974, is the most popular example providing a language of descriptors based on the chemical compounds associated with different **flavors** and **smells of wine**. Below is our complete list of wine word categories, each one including specific descriptors you can use to express your wine's **aromas**, **bouquet**, or **faults**.


### Aromas

- **Fruits**: *citrus (grapefruit, lemon, lime, mandarine), tree fruit (pear, apple, green apple, peach, cherry, plum), tropical fruits (melon, guava, lychee, passion fruit, pineapple), red berries (redcurrant, blackcurrant, strawberry, blackberry)*
- **Floral**: *honeysuckle, hawthorn, orange blossom, linden, jasmine, acacia, violet, lavender, rose*
- **Vegetal**: *vegetable (green pepper, tomato), fresh herbs (cut grass, dill, thyme, mint), dried herbs (tobacco, hay), leaves (blackcurrant leaves, eucalyptus)*
- **Mineral**: *flint, kerosene*


### Bouquets

- **Spices**: *clove, nutmeg, licorice, cinnamon, pepper, vanilla*
- **Nuts**: *almond, hazelnut, coconut*
- **Woods**: *pine, cedar, sandalwood, oak*
- **Yeast**: *bread*
- **Malolactic fermentation**: *butter, yogurt*
- **Animal**: *musk, leather*
- **Undergrowth**: *tree moss, mushroom, truffle*
- **Mineral**: *tar*


### Faults

- **Trichloroanisole**: *corked*
- **Oxygen**: *sherry*
- **Volatile acidity**: *vinegar, nail polish remover*
- **Sulfides**: *rubber, rotten egg, onion, sweet corn*


Alternatively— or better, after having mastered your wine palate— you can also **express wine taste through your emotions**. [Epistenology](https://thenewgastronome.com/epistenology) explains how wine experts and artists can discover new tools to describe the taste of wine, involving painting or more creative practices such as *describing your wine as a person*.




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*Article URL: https://choco.com/us/stories/wine-dictionary*