It’s almost Salingerian, this approach to wine terminology. You, the average wine drinker, may not be aware of the linguistic pitfalls that lurk out there in the minefield that is winetasting land.

Obviously, I have been out of the verbal group-grope that develops in a roomful of wine tasters, hard at it, too long. True, I do prefer the loneliness of the long-distance taster, alone in my tasting cubicle with just a little piano jazz for company. Or a friendly session, preceded by dinner and followed by a wallop of whisky, with my long-constituted panel of palates. And yes, we do have our own language—an obscure offshoot of Gheg.

But it’s nothing like these guys’. “Pooey” and “slutty”? I mean”¦ Are we talking about the same substance, fermented grape juice?

All this came about some months ago when I was asked by a glossy local publication to take part in its annual blind tasting of many, many wines. Consequently, there were many, many tasters seated at a half-dozen big, big tables in a venerable atavism—a downtown private club.

Two-and-a-half days we were at it, hammer and tongs. And corkscrews and spit buckets. The first day was a pass-fail round, i.e., yes, I’d taste that again; no, I wouldn’t. That cut the playing field in half. Which still left too many wines for the human sensory system, but that’s the way it goes. Nobody said this would be easy.

The following day, it was time for more intensive ruminating. The idea was to end up with 10 top picks that we would all append our signatures to as being the best of the bunch.

After a little warm-up in which we found our linguistic legs—to masticate a metaphor—the standard terminology began to flow: focused, lifted flavours, opening aroma notes, up, down, charmed, and strange. Then the arsenal of comparative oddities began to whistle past the ears, all those nifty terms we wine writers like to employ to cover our butts. Celery salt, cocoa butter, sandpaper, mica flakes, citrus edges, fruit bombs, cedar shakes (or is it shingles?), saddle leather, cigar-box lining, wet dog, mushroom caps, Lipitor blister packs, intimations of rhubarb, tin washboard scrapings, Curad bandages, and barnyard. (The latter is much loved by analysts of Burgundies, particularly Pinot Noir. I recall a visit to the Oklahoma City stockyards many years ago: I walked into the auction ring, sniffed the ambiance, and declared, “Yep, Pinot Noir, all right!” before being smacked by a guy in a Moorea Ready-Mix ball cap”¦but that’s another story.)

There was a plethora of blather going down, spearheaded by a famous critic who frequently finds all of the above—and more besides—in a simple little Pinot Gris, working on the principle of giving us the most descriptors for our buck.

There is precedent, of course. We’ve known for a long time that Pinot Noir is often expressive in terms of cherries. Merlot evokes plums; Chardonnay is occasionally redolent of vanilla, sometimes citrus; and Sauvignon Blanc gives us grassy notes. Sauvignon Blanc is actually the etymological frontier for the next wave, which encompasses cat’s pee and gooseberry pulp, as well as the Kentucky Blue.

So it was well into the afternoon of the second day when, as we each voiced our opinions and mini critiques, someone across the table said after the requisite lip-smackage, “Kind of slutty, but I kind of like it.”

Slutty?

I wondered at the depth of reference—like, how many wine sluts have you spent a naughty weekend with? But someone else agreed, so I filed the term away. This is the first and only time I intend to employ it. It still seems a little risqué.

And it opened the floodgates. Not much later in the day, someone else opined that the wine under consideration was “mouse-pooey”. I fairly flew to my note pad. I’d heard of the ladybug fiasco in Ontario, of course, even tasted wine that was “ladybugged”. Had I not been apprised of the unusual flavour permeating the wine, I don’t know if I’d have come up with that term.

But pooey had some stick-to-itivness. Slutty and Pooey. It is Salinger! It begs the question: who among us goes around ingesting poo, in order to have a reference point?

Who among them, then? ’Cause it ain’t me, babe.

The first wave of terminology was cozy and simple: nice, innit? Good and sweet. “Cuts the grease” was the most versatile and essentially honest. Got any ice?

Then came the initial mnemonics to help us remember, and distinguish Concord from concave.

Another wave introduced us to Brett (nickname for brettanomyces, and everybody had to get into that one); garrigue, which not even the French, who came up with it in the first place, knew about unless they lived near the Pyrenees; and the aforementioned S & P.

But because I don’t soon want to be escorted out the delivery-dock door of this learned journal for not keeping up, I am ready to embrace the new nomenclature. I also think, rather than excretal and blowsy, we might consider a return to cozier terms: gingham, maybe, or Melmac. Bootstrap for one of those “lifted flavours” blends; scouty for anything fruit-forward; twinky for a saucy little bubbly number; mac ’n’ cheesy for a rib-sticking red; and hemoglobular for a really big and beefy Cabernet.

Nothing from the scatological arsenal of rodents, okay? Perhaps, though, that’s where we arrive logically. Could it be that the Latin for the genus, mus, is also the origin of the initial crushed-grape expression, must? Have I inadvertently stumbled across the solution to a puzzle?

I dunno. I’m just sitting here with my head stuck in a tumbler of kelpish, Paleozoic Pinot.

Not long ago, Burrowing Owl’s winemaker, Jeff Del Nin, told me over a hearty dinner at the winery that he’d figured it out: “All you really need to describe a wine is two fruits and one spice.”

So here it is, that nice new Riesling I just opened: fruit-forward, leg-lifted mangosteen and dragon fruit, with a hint of achiote dulse.

Feel free to use it at the dinner table tonight; I’ve got a few dozen more. After Salinger, there’s always Danielle Steel.