Are words better than numbers for describing wine quality?

Last week, I wrote about using numbers to describe wine quality (The fundamental problem with wine scores). The advantage of expressing quality this way is that numbers conveniently have a simple linear order from minus infinity to plus infinity, so that they give the impression of being unambiguous. The disadvantage is that, in order to have a number mean anything worthwhile, it has to combine all of the various components of quality together, in which case its interpretation is actually ends up being quite ambiguous. Much of this discussion was recently summarized in: The demise in popularity of critical wine score pronouncements.

The only alternative we have is to use words. After all, we can use a whole set of words, describing each of the various quality components, so that we don't really need to combine multiple dimensions into a single word. As Kevin Brogle has noted: "I value the description more than the score. The score only tells you how much they liked it, not how much you will like it." So, this post is for Phllip White, who has always preferred words to numbers, and wine to either of them. Get well, mate.

Words versus numbers

Before we start, it is important to note that to the general wine-drinking population, words can apparently be just as effective as numbers. For example, consider this 2017 survey of purchase influences in the USA, from Wine Opinions. It suggests that a positive written wine review does just as well as 90+ score, in terms of influencing a purchase.

On the other hand, it is clear that the actual descriptions themselves are often not helpful. As an example, consider the poll conducted by One Poll for Lathwaites Wine 2013 survey: 66% of wine drinkers find wine descriptions UN-helpful in choosing wine. The people surveyed considered some words to be useful (eg. fresh, zesty, peachy) and some other words to not be (eg. brooding, haunting, tongue spanking).

There is a lesson here, I think, which is that words have serious limitations.

Some limitations of words

We regularly see blog posts from around the world noting that there are several different limitations to words when they are applied to wine (eg. Have we reached the end of wine criticism?). These include:

• wine descriptions are not uniform, so we cannot compare them;
• wine descriptions are too imprecise to help us evaluate wines;
• wine descriptions are too flowery or pompous to be of practical value.

The last point may be a matter of taste, just like wine. For example, the above-mentioned Philip White has engendered this comment from Kim Brebach: "Philip White writes about wine in a way no one else ever has." This may very well be a good thing, which you can check out for yourself at his blog Drinkster.

However, the first two points can be addressed in a more objective manner. After all, we can still be quantitative about wine descriptions, even without numbers. For example, here is the Wine & Spirit Education Trust's recommended word "formula" for describing a wine.

Not unexpectedly, most wine commentators go far beyond this. Indeed, they would probably have very few readers if they didn't show a bit more literary flair. And therein lies the basic issue of lack of uniformity and precision in wine descriptions.

Much of the information on this topic is summarized in the 2009 book by Adrienne Lehrer, Wine and Conversation, 2nd edition. The book discusses the large set of English words used for wine description (usually adjectives, and frequently metaphorical), and whether they each mean the same thing for different people. The author concludes that there is very little consensus about the meanings of wine words, although enologists are better able to agree on descriptions of wines than are lay people. However, most people are not able to describe the wines they have tasted so that other people could reliably match those descriptions to the actual wines.

Uniformity and precision

Steve Lay has noted: "Straw, tobacco, black cherries, currants, blackberries, crisp apples, floral, etc. These are just a few of the standard aroma definitions and some taste profiles of a wine; for which we can all agree." This is true, although the vocabulary actually goes way beyond these few words. Indeed, Lehrer's book starts with a list of 238 words "found in the wine literature". Therein lies the communication problem: how could we ever be either uniform or precise with so many words?

As a simple exercise, I have compared the 5-word descriptions from Journey Through Wine: an Atlas (Adrien Grant Smith Bianchi & Jules Gaubert-Turpin. 2017) and Wine Folly: the Essential Guide to Wine (Madeline Puckette & Justin Hammack. 2015). For each of the wines from 40 different grape varieties, I looked for words in common between the two books, interpreting this very loosely. The resulting counts are:

Words in common 0 1 2 3 4 5

Number  of wines 6 17 11 3 3 0

So, most of the descriptions (70%) had only 1-2 words in common out of 5, and some had no words in common at all, which is pretty much what I was expecting. Even at this basic level, the words are neither uniform nor precise.

Solutions?

Sadly, I have no solutions, myself. Instead, I will present a couple of suggestions from other people.

Let's start with Oliver Styles: Wine writing's lack of judgment, who is apparently tired of repetitive tasting notes, and wants firm opinions rather than lists of adjectives:

while this ability to find and use new expressions for having a smell and a taste of something hints at a future on the Mills & Boon roster, we rarely get more understanding of whether the critic getting creative with language likes the wine or not. Basically, that's left to the number.

That is, instead of relying on florid word descriptions plus a number, we should actually write about whether we like the wine or not. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I doubt that it is, though.

Another alternative is to treat the data as multi-dimensional, just as I did last week for wine-quality scores. The bottom line is this: it still takes multiple words to describe all aspects of a wine's quality, and summarizing this in a word or two does not change anything. As I said for the situation of using numbers, we are still summarizing multiple dimensions (expressed as words, this time) into one dimension (a small set of words).

I pointed out last time that, under these circumstances, we actually need to draw graphs, in this case graphs of the word collection, rather than numbers. This idea has long been applied to wine descriptions, for example the early works by Louise S. Wu, R.E. Bargmann & John J. Powers (1977. Factor analysis applied to wine descriptors. Journal of Food Science 42: 944-952) and H. Heymann & A.C. Noble (1989. Comparison of canonical variate and principal component analyses of wine descriptive analysis data. Journal of Food Science 54: 1355-1358).

It is difficult seeing the wine-buying public going for this solution. However, I have shown one example picture below the line, along with a discussion, for anyone who might be interested.

Conclusion

It has been suggested that a wine-quality score is actually a word not a number (A wine rating is an adjective, not a calculation). If it is, then perhaps we should use actual adjectives, rather than supplying mathematical substitutes. Unfortunately, adjectives do not really seem to be up to the job of expressing quality, at least not in a uniform or precise manner. In which case, literary wine descriptions will continue to hold sway, with or without an attached score.

To quote Rusty Gaffney:

Some astute wine consumers look closely at the descriptors in a wine review and find it of paramount importance relative to the score. The description of the wine seems of greater usefulness, especially if the reader can see “between the lines”, and understands certain words or phrases that the writer uses that are a tip-off indicating a special wine. Wine descriptions would seem to be of most value to well-informed wine consumers, while others less knowledgeable about wine look more to scores for guidance.

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Below is an ordination diagram, as an example of summarizing multi-dimensional wine information. It is taken from:

Alice Vilela, Bebiana Monteiro, Elisete Correia (2015) Sensory profile of port wines: categorical principal component analysis, an approach for sensory data treatment. Ciência Técnica Vitivinícola 30:1-8.

In this work, a panel of tasters evaluated each of each 28 port wines for a set of 23 characteristics. The characteristics could each be described by a word, representing colors, aromas, flavors, mouthfeel, balance and persistence.

Each of the 28 labeled points in the diagram represents one of the wines, labeled as either a White Port (BW), a Ruby Port (BR) or a Tawny Port (BT). The proximity of the points to each other represents how similar they were in wine style, based on their descriptions (by the evaluators). Note that the wines do cluster by type, with all of the whites grouped at the bottom-left, the rubies at the bottom-right, and the tawnies at the top of the diagram.

The 23 words represent the descriptions that were evaluated for each of the wines. The location of each word (or set of words) on the diagram tells us which wines they were associated with. For example, the description "Dried fruits" was associated mainly with Tawny Ports, whereas "Red fruits" was associated with Ruby Ports, and "Honey" was associated with White Ports. On the other hand, the descriptions "Woody" and "Golden" were associated equally with Tawny Ports and White Ports, but not with Ruby Ports; and "Red fruit flavor" was associated with Tawny Ports and Ruby Ports but not White Ports.

The diagram thus shows us a single picture of how all of the word descriptions related to all of the different wines.